Marc Sluijs
Consolidating Digital Health – The M&A Imperative
Digital health is over-fragmented: too many me-too and point solutions, too local, and too small to sell, implement, and support at scale. The path forward is consolidation—building critical mass so large payers, providers, and life sciences companies can buy with confidence while investors gain clearer exits and value realization.
The lack of scale is the single biggest obstacle to broader adoption of digital health, much more important than reimbursement codes or regulatory aspects.
Digital health’s demand side is clear: buyers struggle to select among numerous me-too and niche tools, then face the burden of stitching them together. Long sales cycles, global delivery requirements, and worries about vendor stability make small suppliers a risky bet. On the supply side, a wide range of acquirers—from digital health and HCIT to CROs, medical devices, pharma, big tech, even consumer—plus private equity with vast dry powder, is poised to roll up assets once they reach repeatable scale. The flywheel: consolidation creates capacity to deliver globally, boosts adoption, clarifies exit paths, and attracts more capital—compounding value for patients, providers, and payers.
When Fragmentation Meets Finance:
Why Scale Becomes the Product
What you’ll learn
-
How fragmentation (me-too, point, and local solutions) blocks enterprise adoption and why critical mass changes the calculus
-
Why long sales cycles, global delivery needs, and vendor longevity make scale a non-negotiable buying criterion
-
What consolidation pathways look like—and which acquirer categories are most active across health and life sciences
-
Where private equity’s dry powder and industrial buyers create a virtuous cycle of roll-ups, adoption, and exits
-
Which strategic choices founders must make early—build to acquire or be acquired—and how to align capabilities accordingly
Marc Sluijs founded Digitalhealth.Network which contributes to scaling the digital health industry as facilitator of growth funding and M&A, having realized more than ten successful transactions in recent years. Specialized in digital health since more than a decade, Marc Sluijs previously spent more than 20 years working with the life sciences industry in a variety of advisory and M&A roles at IQVIA, Accenture, and Oracle Health Sciences. He is also advisor on digital health to several buyout funds such as EQT and Mubadala.
About the Author
Marc Sluijs
Connect
