The Device Divide
Today, the 'digital divide' separates those who can access the latest digital tools from those who cannot. In digital health, we face a 'Device Divide' — economic disparities that may prevent patients, providers, hospitals, and clinics from accessing the latest technological innovations.
Trend Longevity Rating
matured and remains highly relevant, even where the details changed
How this trend held up
The specific gap the book measured — slow EHR adoption in low-income and minority communities — has largely closed; U.S. hospital EHR adoption is now near-universal, driven by the same federal incentive programs the book described. But the divide didn't disappear, it relocated. The pandemic-era shift to telehealth exposed a broadband- and device-access gap that mapped onto the same populations the book flagged as underserved, and the current frontier — access to AI-assisted diagnostics and remote monitoring — is showing early signs of the same pattern. The book's core warning, that health technology's benefits reliably reach the privileged first, held up; the specific technology in question kept changing.
Every past trend prediction is re-reviewed and graded with a Trend Longevity Rating, measuring how much each originally curated trend still matters years later.
