What’s next for digital health? Signify Research’s 2026 predictions

1. Ambient Listening Goes Workflow-Native

Ambient listening will shift from a “nice-to-have note taking tool” into a workflow engine in 2026. As clinicians become comfortable with copilots capturing and structuring encounters, the next frontier is automatic propagation of tasks across care pathways.

Instead of documentation being the final output, ambient systems will trigger follow-up labs, patient outreach, referrals, and coding actions automatically.
For health systems under severe labour and cost pressure, this represents
the first real opportunity to convert ambient data into downstream operational efficiency.

Agents will increasingly coordinate with other agentscreating scheduling loops, routing tasks to care coordinators, and escalating risk patterns.
The risk: workflow brittleness. If ambient systems misfire, propagate incorrect actions, or create audit gaps, trust will evaporate.

Vendors that deeply integrate with EHR ordering, coding, and scheduling rails not just transcription will win.

2. Behavioural & Metadata Signals Move to the Forefront

2026 is the year behavioural data which has been long ignored or siloed becomes a frontline clinical and operational asset. AI systems can now detect subtle temporal patterns: the exact times patients reliably engage, early-warning behaviour preceding deterioration, or micro-signals indicating drop-off in medication adherence or therapy compliance.

This shifts population health from reactive to anticipatory. Providers can time outreach precisely, automate nudges that actually land, or detect “digital biomarkers” invisible to clinicians. Payers view this as an efficiency lever: preventing avoidable admissions by analysing sleep patterns, mobility variance, app-usage drift, or cognitive-behaviour cues.

The challenge is governance and explainability. Behavioural data can feel intrusive unless transparently communicated.
Vendors that pair predictive signals with interpretable, clinician-friendly narratives (“what changed and why it matters”) will earn trust and adoption.

3. Efficiency & Revenue-Integrity Solutions Outperform Engagement Tools

Tariffs, labour shortages, inflation, and ongoing margin compression will dominate 2026 provider and payer strategy. This means the purchasing centre of gravity moves decisively away from wellness apps and consumer engagement.

Instead, organisations will invest in efficiency, coding integrity, denial prevention, and throughput optimisation areas with quantifiable ROI in months, not years. AI-powered documentation improvement, automated prior-auth routing, clinical-financial reconciliation, and staffing optimisation tools will see disproportionate uptake. F or vendors, the message is blunt: “Show savings or revenue lift within two quarters.”

This environment rewards products with measurable impact: fewer touches per encounter, higher coding completeness, shorter A/R cycles, and reduced clinician administrative burden. The risk is vendor overcrowding lots of companies now have the same pitch.

The winners will be those who integrate meaningfully into messy existing HR workflows rather than sitting beside them.

4. Consolidation & Roll-Ups Accelerate Across the Digital-Health Stack

2026 will be a decisive M&A year as EHRs, HIEs, and population-health vendors absorb adjacent assets to offer broader, AI-enhanced platforms. The days of standalone patient-engagement tools, niche analytics dashboards, and single-feature telehealth apps are numbered.

Large incumbents want to be the “operating system” for hospitals and payers, which means rolling up smaller capabilities into unified workflows. For buyers, consolidation reduces integration pain; for sellers, it provides an exit in an increasingly competitive, AI-crowded landscape.

The risk with these acquistions will manifest in the form of poor integration as we have seen in the Digital health landscape, large platforms often acquire faster than they can harmonise.

Vendors that prioritise interoperability and coherent UX between legacy and acquired functions as opposed to bolting additional features onto the side of existing markets will capture disproportionate market share.

5. GenAI Becomes Table Stakes for Value-Based Care

Value-Based Care (VBC) has struggled with administrative burden, inconsistent documentation, and fragmented data. In 2026, GenAI finally provides the opportunity for practical leverage.

Real-time documentation copilots, summarisation of multi-source records into actionable care plans, and automated patient outreach for gaps in care are areas prime for developing.

In these areas AI will move from “task augmentation” to “revenue-impact.”

Platforms can improve; coding completeness, documentation accuracy, and care-gap closure which are three areas central to VBC economics. Most VBC platforms in 2026 will include at least one production AI feature directly tied to financial uplift or patient-quality metrics.

The risk is overshoot; if AI recommendations exceed clinical tolerance or flood clinicians with low-value alerts, systems will be muted. Vendors must tune for precision & impact over volume.

Signify Research’s Digital Health team provides market intelligence and detailed insights on numerous digital health markets.