Enabling Remote Care: Funding Pathways for Digital Therapeutics and Remote Patient Monitoring

Purpose

The Medical Technology Association of Australia engaged HealthConsult to examine how Australia’s health system can better support the adoption ofevidence-based digital therapeutics (DTx) and remote patient monitoring (RPM) to enable remote care.  Delivered in partnership with MTPConnect, ANDHealth and APACMed, the project focused on three core areas:

• The current funding gaps limiting adoption of DTx and RPM.
• The impacts of these funding gaps on patients, the healthcare system and Australia’s digital health industry.
• Options and recommendations for closing the funding gaps to enable sustainable, system-wide adoption.

The overall objective was to identify practical, nationally consistent funding pathways that would enable proven remote care technologies to move beyond pilots and into routine clinical practice across Australia’s healthsystem.

Approach

HealthConsult undertook a structured policy and system analysis including:

• A comparative review of funding and assessment models for DTx and RPM across leading international jurisdictions, including Europe, North America and Asia-Pacific.
• Development of six in-depth Australian case studies spanning chronic disease management, oncology, cardiology, renal care, neurological conditions and allied health, to examine real-world implementation, evidence generation and funding challenges.
• Targeted consultations with funders, industry representatives and policy experts to identify system barriers, enablers and design considerations for scalable adoption.
• Synthesis of findings into a phased, nationally coordinated funding framework aligned with Australia’s existing structures, including the Medicare Benefits Schedule, activity-based funding and commissioned service models.

Outcome

HealthConsult produced a nationally consistent funding framework to enable the equitable, sustainable and evidence-based integration of DTx and RPM into Australian healthcare. The framework translates proven international approaches into the Australian context, aligning with existing funding, assessment and commissioning structures to support coordinated national access.

The report formed the centrepiece of the Medical Technology Association of Australia’s 2025 MedTech Conference, providing a shared evidence base for discussion between policymakers, health system leaders, clinicians andindustry. It identifies the structural funding and adoption barriers that have constrained DTx and RPM to pilots, demonstrates the consequences of these gaps for patients, the health system and Australia’s digital health industry, and sets out a phased pathway to address them.

Together, the framework provides a practical and policy-relevant pathway for moving remote care technologies from fragmented, short-term initiatives into routine clinical practice, improving access, system efficiency and patientoutcomes nationwide.

This report is available on the MTAA website.