21 connected strategy in the healthcare industry 4. Key Insights and Learnings 1. Gaining trust and establishing credibility across multiple stakeholders in the health- care ecosystem should be the first priority of any digital health company pursuing a connected strategy in order to succeed. As evidenced by the case studies noted above, long-term success with any connected strategy in the patient care space requires winning the trust of patients, providers, and insurers. Patients will be hesitant to share personal, health data with a connected ecosys- tem and also pay for such services if they do not believe there is a guarantee of benefit. Similarly, providers and insurers will be hesitant to advocate for, support, and/or provide coverage for these services if they cannot assess the added value. To gain that trust, companies need to invest as early as possible in clinical and/or cost-effectiveness stud- ies to demonstrate that value and drive consumer WTP. To gain the types of customers that can bring scale to any digital health company, there needs to be well-established, respected studies demonstrating the value of the services/program being published throughout the company's history. Companies should consider running pilot studies or partnering with other healthcare organizations to get that data initially and then conduct more rigorous studies later on once more funding and resources become available. Ad- ditionally, it is important to ensure that the clinical or cost measurements being studied are clear and meaningful to the stakeholders being targeted as customers. It is hard to employ connected strategies in therapeutic areas where clear measurement of clinical improvement or care cost savings cannot be easily quantified. 2. Revenue models for digital health companies focused on patient care continue to be tricky despite the fact that these companies fulfill significant gaps in care through the use of connected strategies. It is important for digital health companies to understand the complexity of payment flows in the healthcare system. As evidenced by the case studies in this paper, di- rect-to-consumer revenue models can be extremely challenging because patients are used to having ongoing care services covered by insurance (minus some copays or deductibles) and are often less willing to pay for recurring care services out-of-pocket. This mindset makes gaining scale through the DTC model too slow for most digital health companies to survive. Therefore, it may be wisest for digital health companies focused on patient care to prioritize large enterprise clients in a B2B revenue model from the outset. Self-insured employers and health plans typically represent large groups of patients/employees that only use covered benefits. The B2B model allows companies to gain scale and customer adoption more quickly. However, these customers will likely