POV: Purchasers Are Demanding Proof. Digital Health Must Catch Up

Purchasers are speaking more clearly than ever. In PHTI’s latest post and 2025 State of Digital Health Purchasing report, one theme stands out above everything else: employers health plans and health systems are still willing to invest in digital health but only if vendors can deliver measurable outcomes, not just promise them.

This shift is not surprising. It’s overdue.

After a decade of pilot purgatory fragmented point solutions and adoption challenges, purchasers are now drawing a hard line. They want accountability. They want transparency. And they want technology partners who understand that real ROI only comes from real clinical and financial improvement.

PHTI’s findings echo what Solera has been hearing in every conversation with our clients and prospects who are navigating rising costs, complex populations and a digital health market that continues to expand without a clear framework for quality or outcomes.

Below is Solera’s point of view on what this report means and what needs to change for digital health to earn and keep purchaser trust.

1.  Purchasers Aren’t Done Investing. They’re Done Guessing.

PHTI highlights that more than 300 purchasers are still committed to digital health, yet they’re frustrated by solutions that don’t tie payment to results. Nearly half already use performance-based contracts, but 86 percent say their current contracts don’t meet their expectations.

Purchasers want to know:

• Which populations should be eligible  
• What level of improvement warrants payment  
• How outcomes will be measured and verified  
• How to avoid claw-back heavy arrangements that punish rather than guide  
• The message is clear: engagement is no longer enough.

Solera sees this every day. Digital health has matured to the point where check-the-box reporting doesn’t cut it. Purchasers expect vendors to quantify real impact on clinical outcomes and total cost of care and they expect the infrastructure that connects everything to be turnkey rather than burdensome. This is the exact problem Solera’s platform was built to solve.

2.  Fragmentation Is Holding Back Outcomes

PHTI’s post reinforces what most purchasers already know: managing dozens of point solutions each with its own data feed eligibility rules payment model and reporting structure makes real outcome measurement nearly impossible.

When everything is fragmented, success becomes subjective. When success is subjective, it can’t be tied to value.

Purchasers are trying to fix an ecosystem problem at the individual vendor level, which simply doesn’t work.

Solera’s view is that the industry does not need more point solutions. It needs a unified way to orchestrate, connect, measure, and pay for them. You cannot get meaningful outcomes when your population is split across disjointed programs within consistent reporting, and one-size fits all definitions of improvement.

Purchasers wantless complexity, better alignment, and clear accountability. A connected virtual care delivery system with shared measurement standards and a single contracting layer is how they get there.

3.  Performance-Based Contracting Only Works with Standardized Measurement

The PHTI post emphasizes new contract templates and tools designed to help purchasers move toward outcomes-based arrangements. This is an important step, but the biggest challenge isn’t writing the contract. It’s executing it. To make performance-based contracting meaningful digital health needs:

• Consistent definitions of improvement  
•  Transparent methodologies  
• Validated measurement models  
• The ability to attribute clinical and cost impact

Solera has long argued that you can’t hold vendors accountable without first establishing a standardized measurement spine that allows apples-to-apples comparison. Purchasers are now demanding exactly that. Solera’s measurement framework built and validated with Health at Scale is already aligned with this direction. It gives purchasers the confidence that outcomes are real, replicable, attributable and financially meaningful.

4.  Purchasers Want a Way Out of Pilots. They Want Population-Scale Results.

One of the most important parts of PHTI’s messaging is that purchasers are tired of fixing the same problem one vendor at a time. They want approaches that can scale across their entire population, not just a segment.

But scaling requires:

• Streamlined contracting  
• Centralized eligibility  
• A unified member experience  
• A consistent quality standard  
• Seamless data across all programs  

This has been Solera’s value proposition from the beginning. You cannot scale digital health by adding more programs. You can only scale by creating a system where every program is orchestrated through a single platform that ensures the right members go to the right solution with outcomes measured in the same way. PHTI’s findings reinforce the urgency of this approach.

5.  The Market Is Shifting from Promise to Proof. Vendors Must Adapt.

Perhaps the strongest message in the LinkedIn post is this: purchasers want digital health partners that can show real clinical effectiveness and economic impact.

• Not projected savings  
• Not engagement metrics  
• Not promising “years of life saved” without claims
• Actual results

The vendors that thrive in the next era of digital health will be those who can deliver measurable impact across diverse populations, share transparent methodologies, and align their payment models to outcomes. Purchasers no longer accept anything less.

Solera’s platform approach enables exactly that because we can measure outcomes consistently across every program and demonstrate population-level cost savings at scale.

Final Thought: Digital Health Isn’t at Risk. The Old Model Is.

PHTI’s report doesn’t signal an end to digital health investment. It signals the end of digital health as a disconnected marketplace of siloed programs. Purchasers are right to demand better because the future of digital health depends on proving not promising impact.

Solera is aligned with this shift. We’ve been building the infrastructure purchasers are now calling for and we believe the next phase of digital health will reward vendors who deliver measurable outcomes at scale with clarity consistency and accountability.