The digitization of patient data and the adoption of cloud-based healthcare management systems have created efficiencies and new business models across the value chain. Advancements in AI provide superior decision support systems to doctors, while connected devices enable the remote delivery of care and monitoring. 

But the most important transformation in healthcare is only just beginning to take shape. Digitization of healthcare demand and supply will eventually lead to the creation of large platforms that aggregate industrywide demand and supply, and orchestrate interactions between producers and consumers of healthcare. 

Sensing this opportunity, big tech firms from Tencent and Alibaba to Amazon and Google, as well as industry incumbents like Philips and UnitedHealthcare, have been moving toward platform models. To understand the importance of platforms in healthcare, we need to start with the forces driving the digitization of demand and supply in healthcare: the digitization of patient data and provider workflows. 

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