In this first quarterly trends report for 2025, we’re examining three pivotal areas reshaping healthcare contact centers: digital therapeutics in mental health, intelligent virtual agents (IVAs), and wearable technology for remote monitoring.
These trends will likely redefine how contact centers function and their role in 2025. Each trend presents unique challenges and opportunities, requiring new strategies to enhance customer satisfaction and maintain operational efficiency.
1. Digital Therapeutics in Mental Healthcare
Mental healthcare has historically faced significant challenges, from limited access and high costs to a shortage of professionals—barriers that have made it difficult for patients to receive adequate treatment, especially in areas where mental health services are scarce or poorly covered by insurance. Digital therapeutics have emerged as a scalable, cost-effective solution to bridge this gap.
Digital therapeutics are software-driven interventions that provide therapeutic support, often using mobile apps or connected devices to deliver treatments for conditions like anxiety, depression, and even ADHD.
The FDA has approved several new devices and digital therapeutics within the last few months. One standout is SleepioRx, an FDA-cleared digital therapeutic for insomnia, which uses cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) techniques to improve sleep quality.
Other recent FDA approvals, such as DeepWell’s digital therapeutic devices, reinforce the clinical effectiveness of these treatments and encourage broader adoption within healthcare systems.
Grand View Research valued the digital therapeutics market at $6.2B in 2023 and expects it to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 27.2% through 2030, driven by increased demand for accessible, patient-centered care.
Implications for healthcare contact centers
For healthcare contact centers, particularly those supporting Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs), the rise of digital therapeutics brings a new set of responsibilities beyond traditional support roles:
Enhancing patient and member experience, standing in for providers
For many seeking mental health support, Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) serve as a critical entry point, especially given the limited coverage often provided by traditional insurers. EAP contact center representatives are already trained to handle these sensitive interactions with empathy, calmness, and awareness of potential triggers during crisis calls.
The emergence of digital therapeutics adds new complexity to this landscape. While these tools offer a valuable option for those without comprehensive coverage, they demand even greater emotional intelligence and communication skills from care teams. In cases where digital therapies operate without direct provider oversight, contact center representatives become de facto healthcare advisors, requiring deeper knowledge of mental health conditions and crisis management.
These representatives must also master new technical territory, addressing questions about how digital therapeutics work, their benefits, and their integration with traditional care models. This may extend to providing basic technical support for these digital tools.
The intersection of mental health care and digital therapeutics ultimately challenges contact center representatives to elevate their capabilities, combining technical knowledge with enhanced empathy to support patients in unprecedented ways.
2. Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVAs) in Healthcare
With growing expectations for faster service, healthcare contact centers are increasingly adopting IVAs to meet the demand.
Unlike basic chatbots that provide menu options like “Press 1 for appointments, press 2 for claims, press 3 for refills,” IVAs use advanced artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities, including natural language processing (NLP) and sentiment analysis, to handle more complex, conversational interactions.
These systems can respond to a wide range of inquiries, from billing questions and appointment scheduling to providing medical information and offering guidance on insurance coverage—all without the need for a human agent.
IVAs, available 24/7, offer a seamless experience that significantly reduces hold times and provides immediate support for routine inquiries. Using sentiment analysis, sophisticated IVAs can even gauge a caller's emotional tone and adjust their responses to provide more personalized, empathetic interactions.
Implications for healthcare contact centers
The integration of IVAs offers substantial benefits to healthcare contact centers, such as improved patient and member care, reduced IT resources and staffing costs, and enhanced data tracking and reporting. It also introduces unique challenges that must be carefully managed:
Elevating customer satisfaction
IVAs are designed to provide immediate assistance for routine tasks, freeing human representatives to focus on more complex and emotionally sensitive cases. This improved workforce load distribution enhances the patient/member experience, ensuring that individuals receive timely information and can access the help they need without prolonged wait times.
Privacy and security considerations
IVAs handling sensitive healthcare information must comply with strict data privacy regulations like HIPAA to safeguard patient and member trust. Since privacy breaches can lead to legal repercussions and reputational damage, contact centers must equip virtual agents with robust security protocols and prioritize data privacy.
Continuous training and updates
Healthcare regulations, medical knowledge, and patient/member needs constantly evolve, requiring frequent IVA updates. Contact centers must invest in regular model training for their IVAs and establish feedback mechanisms to ensure they remain effective and accurate in addressing inquiries. Keeping IVAs current improves operational efficiency and enhances trust by providing consistent, reliable responses.
In the future, IVAs may handle increasingly complex medical questions, allowing healthcare providers to focus on direct patient care while contact centers manage inquiries. Leveraging these IVAs will help contact centers transform patient interactions and streamline operations while still prioritizing data security and privacy.
3. Wearables and Remote Patient Monitoring
Wearable technology is revolutionizing patient care by enabling real-time health monitoring, reducing the need for in-person visits, and facilitating remote management of chronic conditions. Devices like fitness trackers, continuous glucose monitors (CGMs), ECG monitors, and smartwatches offer patients and healthcare providers valuable health data and a convenient way to track vitals and other health metrics from home.
According to the National Institutes of Health, wearables can alert patients and healthcare providers to abnormal health indicators, making them interventions with life-saving possibilities. Remote monitoring capabilities are particularly beneficial for managing chronic conditions, such as diabetes, hypertension, and cardiovascular diseases, where continuous tracking can prevent complications.
Implications for Healthcare Contact Centers
As wearable technology adoption grows and becomes increasingly integral to patient care, healthcare contact centers will play a more central role in supporting these devices' effective and secure use. The following implications highlight how contact centers can meet this growing demand:
Technical support and troubleshooting
Patients may encounter difficulties with wearable devices, from setup and syncing to troubleshooting connectivity issues. Organizations must ensure contact center care teams have the tools to assist patients with these technical challenges.
Data interpretation assistance
Many patients need help interpreting their health data, and wearables present even bigger challenges. Contact centers can serve as a valuable resource by helping patients understand their health metrics and advising them when they need additional medical attention. Representatives can empower patients to make informed health decisions by providing clarity and support.
Privacy and security considerations
Handling health data from wearable devices introduces complex privacy issues. As with IVAs, contact centers must comply with data privacy laws and maintain secure systems to prevent data breaches. Maintaining trust is essential for successful wearable adoption, particularly as patients become more aware of data privacy concerns.
Integration with healthcare systems
For wearable data to be most effective, it should integrate with electronic health records (EHRs) to give healthcare providers a comprehensive view of a patient’s health. Contact centers may need to work closely with healthcare providers to facilitate this integration, ensuring that wearable data is accessible to providers and actionable within their care plans.
Incentives and insurance coverage assistance
As wearables gain traction in healthcare, insurers are increasingly incentivizing their use. For example, United Healthcare lets members earn rewards (including discounts on wearables) for certain actions, such as getting a flu shot or completing an annual visit. BlueCross/BlueShield offers discounts on Garmin Fitness trackers. In these cases, contact center representatives may have to both educate patients/members about these devices and provide information on how to purchase, obtain, and/or get reimbursement for them.
Contact centers will play a vital role in maximizing the impact of patient care devices—providing technical support, helping interpret data, and protecting privacy. Their ability to empower patients and build trust will be crucial to realizing the full potential of these medical innovations.
Is your contact center ready?
In 2025, healthcare contact centers will be navigating the adoption of new trends—such as digital therapeutics and wearables—that require representatives to learn new subject matter and uplevel their communication skills. As these emerging methodologies shift more of the care experience directly to consumers, they’ll need knowledgeable care teams to support them and provide empathetic assistance.
On the other hand, solutions like IVAs offer a path forward by offloading high-volume, routine inquiries. This frees up human agents to focus on more complex or sensitive cases (such as digital therapeutics for mental healthcare) without sacrificing the caller experience. However, a clear, data-driven approach is essential to determining which inquiries are best suited for IVA support. Observe.ai can provide valuable insights into this area, helping contact centers harness data to optimize IVA use and meet evolving consumer expectations confidently and precisely.
Contact centers that embrace these trends early while developing comprehensive training programs and robust support systems will be best positioned to meet evolving healthcare needs. By investing strategically today, they can become essential partners in delivering the seamless, accessible experience that both patients and members expect.
