Inspired Team
Why We’re Betting on the Consumerization of Healthcare
Short summary: Inspired Capital believes healthcare is increasingly being shaped by consumer expectations for convenience, personalization, transparency, and access. We see opportunities in companies that simplify insurance, support patients, improve clinical workflows, and make care easier to access and afford, alongside a broader shift toward home-based care and more proactive health management.
The consumerization of healthcare is the shift toward products and services designed around patients’ needs, preferences, and everyday lives. It changes how people access care, understand their health, choose coverage, and manage costs.
A decade ago, if you felt sick or “off,” your options often felt narrow. You called your doctor, waited for an appointment, got sent for labs or imaging, waited again for specialist referrals, and then waited once more for someone to interpret the results. The entire process could feel slow, reactive, and built around the system’s schedule rather than your own.
Today, that journey can look very different. Your Oura Ring might flag changes in your usual physiological patterns. You can arrange lab testing through Function, whose medical team orders tests and provides clinician-reviewed insights, or book an MRI scan through Prenuvo, where medical professionals interpret the findings. These services give consumers new ways to initiate healthcare interactions, while clinical expertise remains part of the process.
People can also use AI tools to organize health information and prepare questions for their clinicians. Together, these experiences point toward a healthcare journey in which consumers have more control over when they seek information and how they engage with care.
The U.S. healthcare system is undergoing a structural shift from a system optimized for providers and payers to one increasingly shaped by consumer expectations. Patients are demanding the same immediacy, personalization, transparency, and convenience they experience in every other part of their lives. As healthcare behaves more like a consumer service, we believe new winners will build experiences that feel intuitive, proactive, and patient-centric, meeting people where they are, both digitally and physically.
This transition unlocks new markets, new business models, and new distribution channels. Inspired Capital has invested in a number of companies riding these tailwinds, and we’re excited to back many more exceptional entrepreneurs pursuing big opportunities in this space.
Why Now: Three Forces Driving the Consumerization of Healthcare
1. Consumers are investing in their health
Health has become a top-tier consumer priority, with interest in longevity, fitness, preventive care, and personal health data shaping the products people choose. People are tracking biomarkers, paying out of pocket for convenience, and seeking tools that help them understand their health between appointments.
We believe this health-conscious behavior creates durable demand for personalized, consumer-grade healthcare experiences that help people take a more active role in their care.
2. Rising complexity and cost are pushing consumers to act
Patients face consequential decisions about insurance coverage, deductibles, and the cost of care. According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, U.S. out-of-pocket healthcare spending reached $556.6 billion in 2024, an increase of 5.9% from the previous year.
High-deductible health plans make the cost of individual services especially relevant to patients. Individual Coverage Health Reimbursement Arrangements, or ICHRAs, introduce another form of consumer choice by allowing employers to reimburse employees for individual health insurance and eligible medical expenses instead of offering a traditional group health plan.
These decisions require people to compare coverage, understand benefits, and evaluate costs. The system increasingly asks patients to behave like consumers, and that requires the right tools to help them navigate those choices.
3. AI and interoperability are helping connect the healthcare journey
Advances in AI and application programming interfaces, or APIs, are creating opportunities to connect electronic health records, claims systems, scheduling tools, and care-management platforms. Healthcare technology providers already offer tools for integrating clinical data and automating tasks such as scheduling, reminders, and parts of prior authorization workflows.
We see an opportunity for AI agents to coordinate tasks, share relevant context, and reduce the administrative work that makes healthcare feel fragmented. Delivering that experience depends on reliable integrations, appropriate access to data, and human oversight suited to the task, particularly when clinical decisions are involved.
We believe this combination can create a more coordinated, always-on layer of support that reduces administrative burden and delivers a more seamless, consumer-grade experience.
Where Inspired Capital Sees Opportunity in Consumer Healthcare
Inspired has backed several companies working to expand access and improve the healthcare experience for consumers. Each reflects a bold mission and a clear view of where the healthcare system can go:
- Insurance eligibility should be instant and invisible. Nirvana Health provides real-time insurance eligibility verification, helping healthcare teams understand coverage and connect patients to care.
- Every patient should have access to a healthcare advocate. Solace Health connects patients with advocates who help them navigate the healthcare system and coordinate their care.
- Health insurance and medical bills should be easier to understand. Sheer Health helps consumers navigate benefits, manage insurance claims, and identify potential billing errors.
- AI should help clinicians move patients through diagnosis and treatment more efficiently. Frontera Health develops AI-assisted tools for clinical documentation and diagnostic report preparation in autism and behavioral healthcare.
- Employers and payers should help make healthcare costs more manageable. Paytient works with employers and health plans to give people ways to pay eligible healthcare expenses over time without interest.
- Specialized mental health treatments should be more accessible in clinical settings. Big Leap Health provides access to treatments such as Spravato, or esketamine, through in-person clinics.
Looking Ahead: How Consumer Expectations Could Reshape Healthcare
One of the most consequential shifts we anticipate is the physical relocation of more healthcare into the home. As diagnostics, monitoring, and communications continue to mature, we believe more services will be designed around supporting patients where they live. Post-acute care, chronic disease management, and aging in place are important parts of that opportunity.
Alongside this, we expect a significant wave of company formation around the Medicare economy, from software infrastructure for home-based care to compliance tooling for Medicare Advantage audits to hardware built to help seniors age in place safely.
Primary care is also being reshaped by a combination of virtual care, retail settings, consumer tracking products, and membership or concierge services. Amazon One Medical, for example, combines in-person primary care with digital scheduling and on-demand virtual care, illustrating how consumer expectations can influence the delivery of established medical services.
We believe these models will make accessibility and personalization increasingly central to the patient experience, while clinicians remain essential to preventive care, diagnosis, and treatment. Underpinning this evolution is demand for clearer pricing and coverage information, giving consumers more of the information they need to make decisions.
Two forces in particular could accelerate this transformation. The first is the expansion of GLP-1 medicines. In KFF’s November 2025 survey, 18% of U.S. adults reported having used a GLP-1 drug, including 12% who reported current use. Oral options are also part of this evolving market, with FDA labeling for Wegovy covering both injectable and tablet formulations.
We believe changes in access, affordability, and treatment options could have significant downstream effects on chronic disease management and the services built around it, although the ultimate scale of adoption remains uncertain.
The second force is the emergence of a consumer health identity. Sleep trackers, continuous glucose monitors, regular blood panels, and interest in longevity are making personal health information more visible in everyday life. We believe Americans may increasingly think about their metabolic health with the same attention they give their financial health.
What starts with affluent early adopters can create opportunities to reach a much broader population. We believe health is becoming a defining consumer priority, and the entrepreneurs who build for that future, across every price point, are the ones we want to back.