Five years after the COVID-19 pandemic first captured headlines, affected billions of lives, led to a global prevention effort, and, in the United States in particular, led to a rapid expansion of telemedicine as a primary method for care delivery, the digital healthcare landscape has come to reflect the broader state of the nation: unsettled.

Until recently, the lessons of COVID-19 were most clearly evident in the approach of US federal and state officials toward the emergence of other infectious diseases (such as mpox) and in the accelerated adoption of digital health solutions. Disease tracking and prevention strategies were — and in many cases still are — being developed and implemented at a rapid pace. Among other beneficiaries, rural and underserved populations have been positively affected as a result of the loosening of federal and state restrictions on telehealth, physician licensure, and other rules that often served as barriers to the delivery of modern healthcare.

While many of these changes persist and others are moving forward, rapid shifts in executive branch funding and compliance priorities at the federal level have created a more complex and unpredictable environment. Budget and staffing cuts, both proposed and implemented, are beginning to impact the resources available to research, develop, and deploy digital healthcare initiatives. Virtually every organization — from government agencies to academic medical centers, research-focused universities, private enterprises, investors, frontline hospitals, health systems, and individual practitioners — is now facing the challenge of making long-term decisions in the face of significant short-term uncertainty.

Read more about the future of digital healthcare in the US.