Healthcare News & Views

The real competition to digital health startups

August 5, 2014
By
phil

People often ask who our competition is for SeamlessMD. Usually I rattle off a few companies and explain how we are different. And I do that because people are genuinely asking about other companies operating in the same space.The truth is that our competition isn’t the other patient engagement and remote monitoring companies.Our real competition are the written patient instructions that are overwhelming and at too high of a reading level; the verbal instructions patients receive after surgery that they forget anyways; the habit of telling every patient to go to the emergency department at the slightest inkling of trouble.That is, our biggest competition are the current, traditional practices in patient education and engagement.The current practices have more marketshare than any company out there, and changing these in-grained practices is far harder than competing with other companies on features and user experience.The good news is the shift in the medical culture is happening, as we are already seeing with our early adopters. And we are invigorated by the challenge to write the new story of patient education.This post was written by Dr. Joshua Liu, the co-founder & CEO of SeamlessMD.

The Seamless Team

SeamlessMD transforms paper-based instructions into an interactive, personal navigator for patients on smart phones, tablets and the web to improve outcomes and lower costs. https://www.seamless.md

The real competition to digital health startups

Posted by:
phil
on
August 5, 2014

People often ask who our competition is for SeamlessMD. Usually I rattle off a few companies and explain how we are different. And I do that because people are genuinely asking about other companies operating in the same space.The truth is that our competition isn’t the other patient engagement and remote monitoring companies.Our real competition are the written patient instructions that are overwhelming and at too high of a reading level; the verbal instructions patients receive after surgery that they forget anyways; the habit of telling every patient to go to the emergency department at the slightest inkling of trouble.That is, our biggest competition are the current, traditional practices in patient education and engagement.The current practices have more marketshare than any company out there, and changing these in-grained practices is far harder than competing with other companies on features and user experience.The good news is the shift in the medical culture is happening, as we are already seeing with our early adopters. And we are invigorated by the challenge to write the new story of patient education.This post was written by Dr. Joshua Liu, the co-founder & CEO of SeamlessMD.

The Seamless Team

SeamlessMD transforms paper-based instructions into an interactive, personal navigator for patients on smart phones, tablets and the web to improve outcomes and lower costs. https://www.seamless.md

Recent news from SeamlessMD

Innovation Spotlight: How North Bay Regional Health Centre and Timmins and District Hospital Built a Real-Time Dashboard to Measure the Impact of Digital Health
June 29, 2026

Innovation Spotlight: How North Bay Regional Health Centre and Timmins and District Hospital Built a Real-Time Dashboard to Measure the Impact of Digital Health

Learn More
231: Emory Healthcare's Dr. Zsolt Kulcsar: Why Virtual Health Needs Its Own Department, The "Doc of the Day" That Frees Clinic Space, and Why AI is Better Suited For Virtual Health Than The Exam Room
June 25, 2026

231: Emory Healthcare's Dr. Zsolt Kulcsar: Why Virtual Health Needs Its Own Department, The "Doc of the Day" That Frees Clinic Space, and Why AI is Better Suited For Virtual Health Than The Exam Room

Learn More
230: Wellstar’s CHIO Dr. Pranav Jain: What Ambient Rollouts Get Wrong About the Care Model, How AI Fluency Creates 10X Clinicians, and The One Clinical Skill You Cannot Automate
June 18, 2026

230: Wellstar’s CHIO Dr. Pranav Jain: What Ambient Rollouts Get Wrong About the Care Model, How AI Fluency Creates 10X Clinicians, and The One Clinical Skill You Cannot Automate

Learn More