After years building healthcare platforms, the failure patterns I see are upstream of technology. They are also predictable.

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Digital health funding in the United States reached $14.2 billion in 2025, a 35% increase over the prior year (Rock Health, 2026). AI-enabled digital health companies captured 54% of that total. At Series C, AI-focused startups commanded a 61% funding premium over their non-AI peers. By every public metric, this is the strongest year for digital health since the pandemic-era peak.

It is also the year that Forward Health, the membership-based primary care chain that raised more than $400 million and once spoke openly about replacing primary care visits with AI-enabled kiosks, quietly shut down. It is the year Pear Therapeutics, the first FDA-approved prescription digital therapeutic company, finished winding down two years after bankruptcy.…