Key takeaways
- Most patient engagement software serves hospitals and health systems. Consumer health brands need continuous engagement across the full product, subscription, or program journey.
- The category grew from $28.0 billion in 2025 to an estimated $33.8 billion in 2026, according to Grand View Research. AI-driven engagement held the largest type-segment share in 2025.
- The five platforms below solve different problems, from hospital-first clinical education and portal access to Delight.ai's proactive, omnichannel AI agent for brands that sell or ship directly to a patient.
At a glance
- UpToDate (Wolters Kluwer). Clinical content and patient education inside a provider's existing workflow.
- Orion Health (Virtuoso Digital Front Door). Connected navigation, appointment booking, and patient self-service for a health system.
- Veradigm FollowMyHealth. A mobile-first patient engagement platform with access to records, results, messaging, and appointments.
- Upfront Healthcare. Personalized outreach that activates patients toward a specific action.
- Delight.ai. A proactive, omnichannel AI agent for brands that sell or ship a product, subscription, or program directly to patients.
Most solutions address hospital and health-system buyers evaluating portals, scheduling software, and care-coordination tools. Consumer health commerce brands face a longer relationship, one that keeps going through shipment, onboarding, a support question, and eventually a refill or renewal, so their evaluation criteria need to weigh that continuity, not just a single visit or transaction.
What are patient engagement solutions?
Patient engagement solutions are software platforms that help healthcare organizations communicate with patients, coordinate administrative workflows, and support active participation in care. A typical deployment centers on a patient portal for records and messaging, automated appointment reminders, and outreach that flags a care gap, such as a missed screening or an overdue refill, before it becomes a bigger problem.
Grand View Research values the patient engagement solutions market at $28.0 billion in 2025, with an estimate of $33.8 billion in 2026 and a projection of $126.2 billion by 2033. That forecast represents a 20.7% compound annual growth rate from 2026 through 2033. Healthcare providers held the largest end-use share in 2025, which helps explain the category's hospital-centered product mix.
Consumer health commerce brands extend the category beyond the clinical visit. A diagnostic testing company, digital health program, prescription service, or connected-device brand may need to activate a patient, resolve a shipment question, prompt the next administrative step, and maintain context through renewal or refill. The strongest solution keeps that relationship coherent over time.
What patient engagement looks like for a consumer health commerce brand
A hospital engagement workflow often centers on a visit, discharge, or care gap. A consumer health commerce workflow continues across the lifecycle of a product, subscription, or program, with context carried from the first interaction into each subsequent step. Delight.ai's Agent Memory Platform (AMP) supports this continuity by combining conversation history, business data, and live signals in an evolving customer profile.
Three moments define that ongoing brand-to-patient relationship: Connect, Support, and Continue.
- Connect covers activation, registration, insurance questions, and the steps that prepare a patient to begin.
- Support covers the active experience, including onboarding, order status, billing, and administrative questions tied to the program or product.
- Continue covers the next relevant action, such as a refill, follow-up, renewal, or reminder.
A connected patient thread across chat, SMS, voice, email, and WhatsApp helps each interaction begin with the context already established.
How does AI improve patient engagement?
AI improves patient engagement by responding immediately, personalizing the next interaction with relevant context, and initiating timely outreach when a patient needs to act. These mechanisms can turn a static reminder program into an adaptive conversation that follows the patient's progress.
Enterprise demand for patient engagement solutions is accelerating. Gartner surveyed 321 customer service and support leaders in October 2025 and found that 91% reported executive pressure to implement AI in 2026. Nearly 80% of organizations planned to move at least part of their frontline workforce into new roles as routine work becomes more automated.
In patient engagement, the practical value comes from matching a workflow to the appropriate level of autonomy. An AI agent can answer an order-status question, confirm an appointment, or send an approved reminder. It can then transfer sensitive, ambiguous, or clinically complex conversations to a qualified person with the interaction history attached.
Can AI handle patient scheduling and reminders securely?
Yes, AI can handle patient scheduling and reminders securely when the organization and its vendors apply the HIPAA requirements appropriate to the workflow and the electronic protected health information involved. The HIPAA Security Rule requires reasonable and appropriate administrative, physical, and technical safeguards, with controls selected through risk analysis.
A healthcare buyer should verify four areas:
- A written Business Associate Agreement (BAA). HHS requires an appropriate business associate agreement before a regulated entity permits a business associate to create, receive, maintain, or transmit electronic protected health information on its behalf.
- Documented encryption and transmission security. The vendor should explain how it protects electronic protected health information in transit and at rest, including the encryption standards and key-management practices it uses.
- Role-appropriate access controls. Access policies should limit electronic protected health information to authorized people and systems whose roles require it.
- Audit controls and reviewable records. The platform should record and support examination of activity in systems that contain or use electronic protected health information.
A credible vendor can connect each safeguard to the actual scheduling or reminder workflow. Buyers should also confirm escalation rules and data retention limits, ask who else, including subcontractors, can access the data, and request evidence of incident response before treating a vendor's security story as complete.
5 patient engagement solutions to know
The five platforms below sit at different points in the market, from clinical education and consolidated navigation to proactive activation and Delight.ai's omnichannel AI engagement for brands that sell or ship directly to a patient. Pricing is usually available by quote, so buyers should compare each proposal against the same patient volume, channels, integrations, governance requirements, and success metrics.
UpToDate (Wolters Kluwer)
Category. Clinical content and patient education.
UpToDate provides evidence-based patient education aligned with its clinical decision resources, and healthcare organizations using UpToDate Enterprise can access that content inside the EHR. Two UpToDate solutions ranked #1 in the 2026 Best in KLAS Software and Services report for Patient-Driven Care Management and Patient Education.
Pricing. Available by quote.
Rating. 4.8 out of 5 on G2, across 22 reviews; that rating covers the broader clinical decision support product line.
Best fit. A health system that already uses UpToDate and wants aligned clinical and patient education.
Orion Health (Virtuoso Digital Front Door)
Category. Connected patient navigation, access, and self-service.
Orion Health's Virtuoso Digital Front Door puts appointment booking, forms, messaging, and virtual-care visits behind one patient-facing portal, so a patient can book a visit and complete its intake forms in the same place instead of switching systems. It integrates with EHRs, PAS, HIEs, and third-party systems using standards such as HL7 and FHIR.
Pricing. Available by quote.
Rating. No patient-engagement-specific G2 rating was available during this review; buyers can use Orion Health's published implementation examples and their own reference calls to assess fit.
Best fit. A health system consolidating access, navigation, and patient self-service.
Veradigm FollowMyHealth
Category. Mobile-first patient engagement and personal health records.
FollowMyHealth gives patients access to medical history, lab and test results, secure provider messaging, appointments, prescription-renewal requests, and bills. Veradigm states that the platform connects millions of patients nationwide.
Pricing. Available by quote.
Rating. 3.5 out of 5 on G2 across 23 reviews; 2.3 out of 5 on Capterra across 23 reviews. The gap makes recent review content and reference calls especially useful during evaluation.
Best fit. A healthcare organization seeking a mobile-first engagement platform that spans acute and ambulatory settings.
Upfront Healthcare
Category. Proactive patient activation and outreach.
Upfront uses clinical and patient-reported data with psychographic segmentation and behavioral science to personalize outreach toward actions such as scheduling a visit or closing a care gap. In an 18-month program with Allina Health, Upfront helped reduce emergency department visits by more than 50% among total-joint-replacement patients during the first 14 days after discharge.
Pricing. Available by quote.
Rating. 4.7 out of 5 on G2 across 20 reviews, which also lists a typical implementation time of one month.
Best fit. A hospital or health system that wants personalized outreach to move patients toward specific care actions.
Delight.ai
Category. Proactive, omnichannel AI agent for direct-to-patient brands.
Delight.ai gives consumer health brands one AI agent for proactive and responsive patient engagement across chat, SMS, voice, email, and WhatsApp. AMP maintains context across those channels, and Trust OS logs every action and evaluates responses in real time, so a risky or out-of-policy reply gets flagged, escalated, or blocked by role-based permissions before it reaches the patient.
Pricing. Resolution-based, rather than per-seat.
Rating. 4.6 out of 5 on G2, across 124 reviews under parent company Sendbird.
Best fit. A brand that sells or ships a health product, subscription, or program directly to patients and needs proactive, contextual engagement across channels.
Benefits of patient engagement solutions
Patient engagement solutions create value on both sides of the relationship.
- A reminder that includes the correct next action can recover an appointment or refill, and an immediate answer to an order-status question can prevent an avoidable support contact.
- A persistent patient profile can carry preferences, prior questions, program status, and channel history into each interaction, giving a consumer health commerce brand's patients a coherent experience throughout the relationship.
- Health systems tend to prioritize portal access and EHR-connected care navigation, while a brand that sells or ships directly to a patient needs proactive outreach, omnichannel memory, and governance over what its AI agent is allowed to do, on top of the commerce integrations that connect engagement to the sale itself.
Delight.ai is designed for that direct-to-patient operating model, with persistent context and proactive engagement across channels. See how Delight.ai supports healthcare and consumer health brands.
