Over the past several years, digital musculoskeletal (MSK) care has evolved from an emerging concept into a validated healthcare category. Companies such as Sword Health and Hinge Health have demonstrated that technology-enabled MSK solutions can attract significant investment, expand access to care, and create new models for managing one of healthcare's largest cost areas. Sword Health has reached multibillion-dollar private valuations, while Hinge Health successfully shifted from a highly valued private company to the public markets, demonstrating strong investor confidence in digital MSK care models.
Their success has proven something important: employers, healthcare systems, and insurers are ready for technology-enabled approaches to musculoskeletal health.
The need for innovation has never been greater. Musculoskeletal disorders represent one of the largest drivers of pain, disability, healthcare usage, and lost productivity. According to research published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, annual healthcare spending associated with MSK conditions in the United States is estimated to be approximately $300 billion. The impact extends beyond direct treatment costs, as MSK conditions are often associated with other chronic health challenges, including obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, arthritis, frailty, and falls. The true healthcare and societal burden is therefore significantly broader than the cost of treatment alone.
But the next question is even more fundamental:
How do we move from delivering care more efficiently to understanding changes in human function earlier?
The next evolution of healthcare risk management may not simply be better treatment after a condition develops. It may be the ability to objectively measure functional changes before they progress into disability.
This shift is increasingly reflected in healthcare research priorities, including efforts focused on aging, musculoskeletal health, digital health technologies, and artificial intelligence. The National Institutes of Health and the National Institute on Aging are emphasizing the importance of technologies capable of objectively measuring functional changes, understanding age-related decline, and supporting approaches that preserve mobility and independence.
Maintaining mobility and physical function is a fundamental component of healthy aging. Changes in strength, muscle activation, movement quality, balance, and physical performance can contribute to increased risk of falls, frailty, disability, loss of independence, and reduced quality of life.
Yet functional decline is often gradual. A person does not suddenly become frail. Changes may occur over months or years before they become apparent through traditional healthcare encounters.
Today, functional status is primarily evaluated through episodic clinical assessments, performance-based measures, and subjective reporting. These approaches provide valuable information, but they offer only limited snapshots of an individual's health and may not capture subtle changes in physiological and biomechanical function over time.
Healthcare has become increasingly sophisticated at measuring disease. The next opportunity is developing the ability to measure changes in human function. Wearable technology has already transformed personal health monitoring. Individuals can track steps, heart rate, sleep patterns, and activity levels. However, the next generation of digital health technology must move beyond activity tracking toward functional intelligence.
The question is no longer only:
"How much did someone move?"
The more important question is:
"How did someone move?"
Mobility is influenced by complex interactions among muscle activation, coordination, biomechanics, range of motion, and movement quality. Technologies that integrate physiological sensing, biomechanical measurement, and artificial intelligence have the potential to provide deeper insight into individualized functional patterns.
An AI-enabled platform integrating technologies such as electromyography (EMG), inertial measurement units (IMUs), and advanced movement analytics could establish a foundation for objective digital measures of mobility, functional aging, and early changes that may affect independence and quality of life.
The challenge in healthcare is no longer simply collecting data. The challenge is transforming increasingly complex streams of information into meaningful insights that can support better decisions.
Artificial intelligence offers the opportunity to analyze large amounts of physiological and movement information and identify individualized patterns that may not be visible through traditional assessments. The goal is not to replace clinicians, but to provide clinicians, insurers, employers, and individuals with better information to support earlier and more personalized decisions.
AI-enabled healthcare has the potential to move the system away from simply reacting to decline and toward identifying meaningful changes earlier, when there may still be an opportunity to preserve function.
For insurers, this represents a potential transformation in risk management. The traditional healthcare model has largely followed a reactive path: a condition develops, treatment begins, and a claim occurs.
The future opportunity is a more proactive approach in which functional changes are identified earlier, personalized strategies are developed, and risks associated with decline may be reduced before they progress into costly healthcare events.
Objective measures of functional health could support earlier identification of risk, more personalized care pathways, improved management of chronic conditions, support for aging populations, and value-based healthcare models focused on maintaining function rather than simply treating decline.
This shift is especially important as populations age. Aging does not automatically mean disability. Many individuals remain active, engaged, and independent when changes in mobility, strength, and function are recognized early and appropriately addressed.
Preserving function is not only a healthcare goal; it is becoming an essential component of managing healthcare costs, improving outcomes, and supporting a more sustainable healthcare system.
The future of healthcare risk management will require a fundamental shift in how we define prevention. Prevention can no longer focus only on identifying disease after it develops. It must also include understanding changes in human function before they become disability.
The most valuable healthcare technologies of the future may not simply tell us what happened after a problem occurs. They may help us understand what is changing — enabling healthcare systems, insurers, employers, and individuals to act earlier to preserve mobility, independence, and quality of life.
The future of healthcare risk management will not only be defined by how effectively we respond to disease and disability, but by how well we can identify change earlier, preserve function, and help individuals maintain healthier lives.
