David Holmberg, chief executive officer, Highmark Health
Earlier this year, I had the privilege of attending the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) and being part of its inaugural Digital Health Summit Spotlight Panel. Moderated by Logan Plaster from Startup Health, the panel also featured Dr. Janice Nevin1 from ChristianaCare, our strategic partner in an innovative 10-year joint venture, along with leaders from Google and Eli Lilly. You can watch our entire discussion on video.
More than 140,000 people from around the world attended CES, and over 4,500 exhibitors were there sharing their latest technological innovations. Artificial intelligence, drones, and robots were everywhere, as would be expected. I may not have “expected” robotic dogs that could sense you and sit up and generally act pretty much like dogs, but they certainly attracted attention. I also saw products with potential applications in health care, including innovative environmental technology designed to sanitize a room when somebody is sick.
"Winning consumers and group customers, and delivering on our mission to create remarkable health experiences, depends on how well we match technological innovation with what people will value and use."
DAVID L. HOLMBERG PRESIDENT AND CEO HIGHMARK HEALTH
Health care represents nearly 20% of the nation’s gross domestic product and has been an increasingly promising space for digital innovation, so I suspect that CES will include more programming like our panel and attract even more digital health exhibitors in the years ahead.
However, my focus in this article isn’t the conference itself so much as the importance of the first word in its title: Consumer.
I am enthusiastic, to say the least, about what technology can do to give people better choices and improve quality of life, so it was a treat to see what some of the world’s best and brightest innovators brought to CES. Understandably, some offerings could be described as “products looking for a market.” Is the technology innovative? Yes. Fascinating? Yes. Will consumers value it, buy it, and use it? That’s a definite maybe.
We can’t really take that approach with our core business of health insurance and health care. Our markets already exist. Instead of tech looking for a market, we have to focus on what tech can do for our market. Winning consumers and group customers, and delivering on our mission to create remarkable health experiences, depends on how well we match technological innovation with what people will value and use.
That was my mindset at CES, and it is our mindset when we invite technology companies to present or demonstrate their solutions. Regardless of how their innovation stands out in other ways, we want to know what problem it will solve for our consumers or clinicians or employees. How can it improve how we deliver and pay for care?
Technological innovation has been the engine driving our Living Health model right from its public introduction alongside a long-term partnership with Google Cloud in 2020. Fast forward to 2025, and Living Health now includes more than 35 curated, high-quality digital health solutions. It integrates much of a member’s health, coverage and care into one personalized, easy-to-navigate online experience. And it uses advanced data analytics and artificial intelligence to constantly search about 700 billion data points for signals that allow us to respond proactively with information, guidance or outreach based on a member’s real-time needs.
As I have said before, it is not the technology that makes us special, it’s what we do with it.
Our organization’s focus on customer experience (CX) differentiates us from many peers and competitors. If technological innovation is the engine driving Living Health, our CX capabilities are its navigation system.
I wrote about our CX work in more detail in an earlier article, and you can also learn about our CX transformation in an interview with Stacy Byers, our senior vice president of experience, design and digital. Here I will just emphasize again that CX has become central to everything we do — including assessing and implementing technological innovation.
We’re not competing to see who can offer the most digital health solutions or assemble the biggest tech stack. We’re competing to provide the best overall health experience and achieve the best health outcomes at the lowest cost. That plays out in three ways.
First, we believe it is our responsibility to rigorously assess and curate digital and virtual health solutions so that our members know they are getting high-quality, evidence-based care and will have positive experiences accessing and using the solutions.
Second, we believe we should integrate and connect as much of a person’s whole health experience as possible, so they’re not bouncing around between different apps and platforms while all of their data remains trapped in separate silos.
And third, whether it’s digital and virtual health, an AI application, or wearables and home medical devices, we believe we should advocate for consumers by constantly coming back to what they want, what they will use, and what will make it easier for them to take control of their health. That underscores the importance of consumer research, the industry-leading CX and human-centered design functions we have developed, and our continuous assessment of engagement, ease of use, customer satisfaction, clinical outcomes where appropriate, and qualitative feedback.
Our Living Health model puts the individual and clinician at the center of an ecosystem — and then we ask where and how we can optimize that ecosystem for remarkable health experiences, improved health outcomes, and affordability. Technology plays a tremendous role in that optimization, but the CX throughout our tech stack is just as important in ensuring meaningful, long-term improvement and the immediate benefits for members that we see reflected in performance measures like this:
Our industry faces many challenges. People are frustrated with how the system works — or doesn’t. Clinicians are experiencing burnout. And organizations like ours are battling financial headwinds from multiple directions. If you watch the CES panel discussion, you’ll see me say:
"I truly believe that if we’re going to get this right as a country, we’re going to have to innovate our way out, and the way that will happen is getting the smart people in a room and saying, ‘these are the five problems that are most relevant, that could make a difference, that we agree upon — so what do you have in your tool chest that will work?"
Getting the smart people in the room, defining shared goals, and collaborating closely has become essential as we look for ways to overcome the industry’s biggest ongoing challenges, and new ones that may be on the horizon. For us, that starts with strong payer-provider collaboration, including the learnings from western Pennsylvania, where our health plan and health system share data, decision-making, and financial risk in a value-based model that covers more than 350,000 individuals.
Strong collaborative relationships are just as important when it comes to technology. Dr. Nevin put it very succinctly during the panel discussion when she noted that we have to work closely with tech companies entering our industry so that “as they’re creating their products they can deeply understand the problems we’re trying to solve.” That is exactly the approach we’ve taken in our successful partnerships with Google Cloud, League, Cedar Pay, and digital health solution providers like Spring Health and Sword.
Attending CES reinforced my view that there is a new generation of very smart people who are thinking about things differently and accelerating the pace of technological change — including in industries like health care. The change is inevitable — but organizations like Highmark Health have an invaluable role in making sure the change responds to consumer needs, adheres to clinical best practices, and will improve people’s lives.
For me, both the challenges our industry faces and the opportunities presented by technological innovation reaffirm that we are on the right journey with our Living Health model. By collaborating across the broader ecosystem that impacts each individual’s health, we can achieve a simpler, more proactive and personalized, and better connected health experience and turn all the data available to us into meaningful insights and actions that truly benefit the people we serve.
By: David Holmberg
Originally Posted: February 27, 2025 on Highmark Health
David L. Holmberg is president and chief executive officer of Highmark Health.
This article was first published in Highmark Health Digital Magazine and is used with permission.
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