Twenty years of digital care taught us a surprising lesson: innovation isn’t enough

When my brother Roy and I founded American Well, now Amwell, in 2006, we believed access would be healthcare’s defining challenge.

At the time, the idea that consumers could receive care beyond the walls of a clinic or hospital was still largely aspirational. Geography, scheduling constraints, provider shortages, and limited access points created barriers for millions of people seeking care.

Over the next two decades, healthcare underwent a remarkable transformation. Virtual care moved from the margins to the mainstream. Digital technologies became embedded across nearly every facet of healthcare delivery. Consumers gained new ways to access care, clinicians gained new ways to deliver it, and healthcare organizations embraced models that once seemed far beyond reach.

In many ways, healthcare has made extraordinary progress.

Yet after 20 years helping health plans, health systems, government organizations, clinicians, and consumers navigate this transformation, I’ve come to a surprising conclusion:

Healthcare’s greatest challenge is no longer innovation. It’s coordination.

The first era of digital health was about creating new possibilities.

The next era will be about connecting them.

What healthcare got right

The accomplishments of the past 20 years deserve recognition.

Digital care expanded access beyond traditional settings. It gave consumers greater convenience, flexibility, and choice. It accelerated innovation across primary and urgent care, behavioral health, chronic condition management, specialty care, navigation services, hospital-at-home programs, and countless other areas.

Perhaps most importantly, digital care proved something many once doubted: healthcare can evolve.

An industry known for complexity demonstrated that it could embrace new technologies, new care models, and new ways of serving consumers at scale. Healthcare organizations across health plans, employers, government programs, health systems, and provider groups invested heavily in digital transformation, fundamentally changing how care is delivered and experienced.

That progress created the foundation for everything that comes next.

The lessons we learned along the way

Success revealed a new challenge: healthcare did not digitize as one connected system. It digitized as thousands of separate innovations.

Every year brought new capabilities, new technologies, new clinical programs, new data sources, and new vendors. Today, health plans and healthcare organizations often find themselves managing growing numbers of point solutions, each designed to solve a specific problem but collectively adding operational complexity.

Health plans and healthcare organizations now manage increasingly sophisticated ecosystems of technologies, workflows, and care programs. Consumers navigate multiple entry points. Clinicians work across numerous systems and applications. Administrative teams spend enormous effort connecting processes that were never designed to work together.

In other words:

Innovation scaled faster than integration.

The result is an industry rich in capabilities but often lacking cohesion. This isn’t a criticism of innovation. Healthcare needs continued innovation more than ever. But we have learned that experiences are ultimately judged not by the number of solutions involved, but by how seamlessly those solutions work together.

Consumers don’t experience healthcare as a collection of programs, technologies, and workflows.

They simply expect healthcare to work.

The industry is entering a different era

That reality becomes even more important as our industry enters its next chapter.

In many respects, healthcare is experiencing a tsunami of innovation. AI is accelerating change, while advances in data, automation, and digital care are creating entirely new possibilities. The question is no longer whether innovation exists. The question is how organizations harness it responsibly, effectively, and at scale.

The organizations that create the most value over the next decade will not necessarily be those with the most technology. They will be those capable of bringing experiences, programs, and innovation together in ways that feel cohesive for the people they serve.

Because intelligence without coordination creates noise.

Intelligence combined with coordination creates transformation.

Why this matters now

For years, healthcare measured progress one program at a time. Increasingly, success is measured across entire care journeys.

Healthcare leaders today are asking fundamentally different questions:

• How do we create more connected experiences?

• How do we simplify increasingly complex care ecosystems?

• How do we better support clinicians and care teams?

• How do we integrate innovation without introducing new friction?

• How do we realize greater value from existing investments?

These are not merely technology challenges. They are operational, clinical, and strategic imperatives.

Most importantly, they are human ones.

Because every disconnected experience creates friction for consumers, clinicians, and administrators. And every point of friction stands in the way of better healthcare.

Why Amwell has been building for this moment

Over the past 20 years, Amwell has had a front-row seat to the evolution of digital care. Since 2006, we’ve helped organizations deliver tens of millions of virtual care visits and our health plan and health system customers make digital care available to approximately 90 million covered lives. That experience spans some of the nation’s largest health plans, health systems, and government healthcare organizations.

Along the way, we’ve worked with health plans, health systems, government organizations, employers, and providers across the healthcare ecosystem.

Those experiences have reinforced a simple belief: healthcare’s future won’t be defined by any single technology, program, or breakthrough. It will be defined by how effectively organizations bring people, data, workflows, and care experiences together.

That belief has shaped the lasting imprint we’ve sought to leave on healthcare over the past 20 years. What began as a mission to expand access through digital care has evolved into a broader effort to help our customers create more connected, flexible, and consumer-centered care experiences. In some of our longest-standing customer relationships, we’ve seen the value of bringing health information, clinician access, and multiple care programs together in one place rather than disconnected workflows.

Healthcare’s future depends on preserving choice, embracing new technologies, and enabling organizations to adapt as needs change without sacrificing flexibility or control and without adding unnecessary complexity along the way.

We aren’t alone in seeing this shift. This approach recently received independent validation when Frost & Sullivan awarded Amwell its 2026 United States Technology Innovation Leadership Recognition in the Technology-Enabled Care Platforms Industry award. As Frost & Sullivan Industry Analyst Sagar Mukhekar noted, "In a marketplace crowded with solutions, Amwell distinguishes itself through true orchestration."

This reflects a broader reality we increasingly hear from health plan and healthcare leaders:

Healthcare doesn’t need more isolated innovations. It needs a better way to make them work together.

The next 20 years

The coming decade promises extraordinary advances.

AI will make care more intelligent. Data will make it more predictive. Automation will reduce administrative burden. Experiences will become increasingly personalized. Together, these advances have the potential to reshape how care is delivered, coordinated, and experienced in ways that would have seemed unimaginable 20 years ago.

But none of them will achieve their full promise within fragmented environments.

Before healthcare becomes truly intelligent, it must become truly connected.

That may be the most important lesson we have learned during Amwell’s first 20 years. The next breakthrough will not simply be another app, another algorithm, or another point solution. It will be the ability to bring people, technology, data, and journeys together in ways that feel effortless.

Healthcare will always remain deeply human. Empathy, trust, and personal connection will continue to matter regardless of how advanced technology becomes. Our responsibility is to ensure technology strengthens those connections rather than complicates them.

The first era of digital health was about making care accessible.

The next era will be about making it seamless.

That’s the opportunity that lies ahead.

Forward-looking statements

This article contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, including statements about the future of digital health, the role of artificial intelligence, data, and automation in care delivery, and Amwell’s strategy and priorities. These statements reflect current expectations and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially, including those described under “Risk Factors” in Amwell’s most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K and in subsequent Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, available at investors.amwell.com. Amwell undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statement.