A note from Bronwyn Spira, CEO and Founder of Force Therapeutics.
As 2025 comes to a close, I’ve spent time reflecting on what this year has revealed about where healthcare is headed, what health systems are working through right now, and what it truly takes to deliver high-quality, sustainable care at scale.
Across every conversation I’ve had with health system leaders, clinicians, and operational teams, one theme has been consistent: digital care is not an optional layer anymore. It is core infrastructure.
What 2025 Revealed About Digital Care and Health System Performance
This year underscored a fundamental shift. Health systems that invested in integrated, longitudinal patient engagement saw stronger outcomes, fewer avoidable readmissions and complications, and more resilient care teams. Those that struggled were often still relying on fragmented tools and manual workflows that simply cannot scale under today’s pressures.
Operational efficiency, outcomes collection, and enterprise-wide standardization used to be “nice to have.” They are quickly becoming the foundation for financial stability.
As margins tighten and volumes rise, systems need infrastructure that supports both quality and efficiency, rather than one-offs that ultimately add more work.
We also saw expectations evolve. Digital engagement moved away from being about basic check-ins or generic notifications. Health systems are now expecting intelligent, evidence-based engagement that drives measurable outcomes. In orthopedics, where volume and variability are high, leaders are raising the bar and looking for platforms that reduce variation, streamline PROMs collection, and support better clinical decision-making. Increasingly, those same expectations are extending into other high-value service lines.
Patients Are Reshaping the Care Model
One of the most encouraging trends this year has been patient adoption. Patients are embracing digital care and increasingly expect consumer-grade experiences paired with real clinical value. They want clarity, personalization, and real-time support in place of complexity or one-size-fits-all messaging.
We’re seeing higher participation in remote optimization programs, greater comfort with AI-supported insights, and stronger completion of patient-reported outcomes (PROs) when the experience is seamless and integrated into daily life. These behaviors are reshaping care delivery and making digital care pathways the front door to coordinated, high-value care.
How Compliance Is Driving Better Care Models
Regulatory change accelerated in 2025, and with it came an important realization. Mandates like the THA/TKA PRO-PM and the upcoming TEAM model are not isolated reporting requirements. Rather, they are among a long line of initiatives forcing a rethink of how care is designed, delivered, and measured.
The biggest risk we see is treating compliance as a box-checking exercise. The real opportunity is using these mandates to build durable, enterprise-wide infrastructure for patient engagement, outcomes measurement, and care standardization. Leaders who succeed embed PROMs collection into the natural patient journey, automate it end to end, and move away from manual, disconnected processes.
These mandates are also revealing something critical: quality outcomes and financial performance are no longer separate in a value-based care environment. The organizations that will win are those that align clinical excellence with reimbursement and view compliance as a lever to reduce variation, improve visibility, and drive sustainable performance.
Why Patient Engagement and PROMs Are Now Core Quality Levers
Another clear learning this year is how tightly digital education and outcomes are linked. When patients receive the right information at the right time before and after surgery, they are more prepared, more confident, and more consistent in their recovery. That translates directly into fewer complications, fewer avoidable calls, and more predictable outcomes.
Patient-reported outcomes are more than just a measurement tool. When collected consistently, they shape how care is practiced. They provide insight into recovery trajectories, surface variation across pathways, and enable earlier intervention for patients who are falling behind. Combined with proactive engagement, outcomes data allows care teams to focus attention where it’s needed most and improve quality at scale by working smarter and more efficiently.
Importantly, health system executives are also increasingly utilizing aggregate PRO data as a measure of overall performance for quality improvement initiatives, helping inform decision making on operational improvements and regulatory compliance.
Digital Enablement and AI in Healthcare: Reducing Work, Not Adding It
Health systems are under immense pressure: rising volumes, workforce shortages, tighter margins, and increasing regulation. In this environment, digital tools must function as operational infrastructure.
The most valuable use of AI today is augmenting clinicians instead of replacing them. Practical applications like identifying at-risk patients, surfacing recovery trends, prioritizing outreach, and automating routine documentation can significantly reduce noise and administrative burden. The difference between innovation that succeeds and innovation that fails comes down to whether it genuinely removes work.
Platforms that integrate deeply into workflows and automate the right steps act as workforce multipliers. Tools that sit on the side and require duplicate effort only add friction. Real innovation simplifies care rather than digitizing complexity.
Healthcare Trends to Watch in 2026
Looking ahead, value-based care models will continue to mature, and reporting expectations will increase. We expect models like TEAM to expand into additional episodes, with more stringent requirements and broader use of patient-reported outcomes across service lines.
For hospital leadership, success will hinge on investing in flexible, repeatable digital infrastructure that supports longitudinal care. That means outcomes collection, patient education, bi-directional communication, and a patient experience that actively engages the most underutilized member of the care team: the patient.
Equally important will be workflow efficiency. Margins are unlikely to improve, and burnout remains a real risk. Digital infrastructure that scales existing teams without adding burden will be critical to sustaining performance and retaining talent.
Our Commitment
At Force Therapeutics, we’ve always believed–and 2025 reinforced–that an educated, empowered patient is a successful patient. With 15 years of experience and deep longitudinal data, we continue to learn from how patients engage with digital care and use those insights to continuously improve the experience.
As we move into the new year, we remain focused on helping our partners build durable, scalable care models that improve outcomes, support clinicians, and position organizations for long-term success.
Thank you to the health systems, care teams, and partners who continue to trust us in this work. We look forward to what we’ll build together in the year ahead.
— Bronwyn Spira
CEO, Force Therapeutics
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