Employers today find themselves at the center of a seemingly unwinnable struggle. Health care costs are rising; employer-sponsored health insurance is a $900 billion per year market. Starbucks, for instance, spends more on health care than coffee beans, and GM spends more on health care than on steel. But they are willing to make the investment because they know that a healthy, happy workforce is as valuable as any part of their supply chain — on par with, if not more valuable, than coffee beans and steel. 

While it is a huge business expense, health care is incredibly difficult for employers to manage. Benefits cost varies widely by employer — even within the same industry. Benefits administrators are told to deliver the best benefits for the best value, but are left to navigate a complex and changing system with little idea of what works for whom, when, and why. 

That is beginning to change. A new wave of health care apps, devices, and technology-enabled services has emerged. Care is moving from physical settings to virtual settings. Consumers are taking control of their health care, using fitness trackers and wearables like Fitbit to manage their weight, digital disease management tools like Omada Health to stay on top of chronic conditions, and telemedicine services like Doctor on Demand to talk to a doctor from the convenience of their living rooms. And finally, consumers are making more informed choices about care and coverage with care navigation, second opinion, and price transparency services like Quantum Health, Grand Rounds, and HealthCare BlueBook. 

This all adds up to a thriving digital health ecosystem, creating innovative new companies backed by billions of dollars of investment. But the digital health revolution has yet to be unleashed because the digital health care ecosystem is fractured and fragmented, limiting its value to both consumers and employers. 

When digital health tools are offered, employees — overwhelmed with choices, each with its own log-in and interface — aren’t using them, if they can even find them. Managing these options is like herding cats. The deployment of each program carries overhead related to internal communication, technology configuration, and work-planning process. Discovering what works is expensive because these solutions provide limited metrics on program adoption, behaviors, outcomes, and satisfaction. 

Thus, no matter how many new apps, devices, or innovations that Silicon Valley produces, their potential impact will be severely limited. Imagine what it was like when you wanted to buy a song or a movie on the Internet years ago. You had to hunt and peck, and had no idea what the quality was. Now, thanks to the Apple and Google stores to name just two, it’s an easy, tailored shopping experience. 

That’s what is needed for digital health. We need an enterprise-grade marketplace. 

First, it needs to be efficient, seamlessly connecting employees to the supply of available point solutions, based on each individual’s needs and desires. It will provide the right incentives to motivate engagement with the right tools for the right people at the right time. Second, this marketplace needs to be flexible, to absorb changes to the ecosystem, such as new entrants, new solution categories, and even new benefits paradigms. Third, it must have measures and controls, so that population managers can adapt their strategies based on what works, and get the most out of their limited benefits budgets. And fourth, the marketplace needs to eliminate administrative overhead by managing payments and contracts with the complex vendor ecosystem. 

If this sounds familiar, it should, since this is what enterprises have in other parts of their business. Most software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies, from Salesforce.com to Oracle, offer controls to manage complexity in the enterprise setting, and can scale efficiently. In the same manner, a well-designed digital health care hub will work equally well with 1,000 employees or 100,000 employees, two point solutions or 20. Employers should be able to add and remove new programs as easily as Lego blocks. 

Placing digital health innovations in the right system that will allow us to reap its rewards. Doing so will give managers the insights they need to personalize benefit programs, learn what works, and drive engagement. And only if these innovations are easy to use and tied to the benefit packages most people get anyway, will they be used. If we do that, technology truly will remake health care, and in the process help bring down costs and lead to healthier lives for millions.

Derek Newell is the CEO of Jiff, and has been leading innovative health technology and service companies for more than 20 years. He led the company that built the first FDA-approved internet connected medical device and grew it into the world’s largest remote patient monitoring company. Before that, at LifeMasters, he helped pioneer the first patient-centric disease management platform and built one of the largest disease management companies in the US. Derek holds graduate degrees in business and public health from UC Berkeley.