From Digital Health to Just Healthcare: Reflections from CES 2026

The Line Between Digital Health and Healthcare Is Gone

CES has always been a place to glimpse the future. But this year, the digital health programming made something very clear: the future we’ve been talking about for years is already here. The most important takeaway from CES 2026 wasn’t a new device, algorithm, or acronym. It was the growing consensus that there is no longer a meaningful distinction between “digital healthcare” and “healthcare.” Technology is no longer an add-on. It is the infrastructure.

I had the privilege of participating in two CES panels—Always On: How Continuous Health Data is Transforming Care and Healthcare 2035: A Vision for the Next Decade—and both reinforced this same idea from different vantage points.

From Episodic Care to Continuous Understanding

On the Always On panel, we discussed how continuous health data from wearables and remote monitoring devices is fundamentally reshaping care delivery. For decades, healthcare has relied on episodic snapshots—an annual visit, a lab draw, a single blood pressure reading taken in a clinic. But health doesn’t happen in snapshots. It happens continuously, shaped by daily behaviors, environments, sleep, stress, and nutrition.

Continuous monitoring changes that. It allows patients to understand their own personal baselines and empowers them to make informed choices in real time. It also allows care teams to move from reactive to proactive—to stratify risk, intervene earlier, and tailor care rather than relying on one-size-fits-all standards. When implemented thoughtfully, this shift has the potential to bring humanity back into care by focusing attention where it’s needed most.

Making Data Actionable—for Clinicians and Patients

But data alone isn’t the answer. A consistent theme across CES was that technology must integrate seamlessly into clinical workflows and daily life. If insights aren’t actionable, trusted, and aligned with how clinicians and patients actually operate, they become noise instead of signal.

At Rimidi, we see this every day: the value isn’t in more data—it’s in the right data, delivered at the right time, in the right context.

Healthcare 2035: Technology in Service of Outcomes

That theme carried directly into the Healthcare 2035 discussion, which explored what the next decade of care could—and must—look like. One point of agreement among panelists was that people don’t care about health technology for its own sake. They care about outcomes. They care about living longer, healthier lives. They care about affordability, access, and experience.

This is where AI, continuous data, and digital infrastructure converge. The healthcare system has become too complex for humans alone to manage effectively. Clinicians are overwhelmed, data is fragmented, and workforce shortages continue to grow. The question isn’t whether technology will play a role—it’s how responsibly and effectively we use it to create capacity, reduce burden, and improve outcomes.

Policy, Payment, and the Path to Scale

Importantly, CES also highlighted the role of policy and payment in accelerating this shift. Federal leaders spoke candidly about modernizing outdated infrastructure, enabling data liquidity, and aligning incentives around outcomes rather than volume. These efforts matter because technology can only transform healthcare at scale when the system is designed to support it.

Digital Health Isn’t the Future—It’s the Present

Leaving CES, I felt a sense of cautious optimism. Not because the challenges are small—they aren’t—but because the conversation has matured. We are no longer asking whether digital health belongs in healthcare. We are finally asking how to make healthcare work better, using every tool available.

Digital health isn’t the future of healthcare. It’s just healthcare now.

Building the Infrastructure for Continuous Care

The shift to continuous, technology-enabled care is already underway—but success depends on implementation. Rimidi provides the clinical and technical infrastructure to turn data into action, scale virtual care programs, and improve outcomes across populations. If you’re ready to move beyond pilots and make connected care part of routine practice, learn how Rimidi can help. Visit our website and request a demo to learn more.