In 2020, we published an editorial about the massive disruption of health and care services caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the rapid changes in digital service delivery, artificial intelligence and data sharing that were taking place at the time. Now, 3 years later, we describe how these developments have progressed since, reflect on lessons learnt and consider key challenges and opportunities ahead by reviewing significant developments reported in the literature. As before, the three key areas we consider are digital transformation of services, realising the potential of artificial intelligence and wise data sharing to facilitate learning health systems. We conclude that the field of digital health has rapidly matured during the pandemic, but there are still major sociotechnical, evaluation and trust challenges in the development and deployment of new digital services.