Advice On Winning Attention For Digital Health Solutions

Some of you reading this are probably involved with a digital health startup to one degree or another. If so, you’ve probably seen firsthand how difficult it can be to get attention for your solution, no matter how sophisticated it is or how qualified its creators are. In fact, given the fevered pace of digital health’s evolution, you may be facing worse than typical Silicon Valley odds.

That being said, there are strategies for standing out even in this exploding market, according to participants at a recent event dedicated to getting beyond health tech hype. The event, which was written up by health tech startup incubator Rock Health, featured experts from Dignity Health, Humana, Kaiser Permanente and Evidation Health.

Generally speaking, the panelists from these organizations spelled out how health tech startups can make more convincing pitches, largely by providing more robust forms of evidence:

• They said that standard metrics demonstrating the effectiveness of your solutions — such as randomized trials and evidence-based reviews — probably weren’t enough, as they sometimes don’t translate to real-world results. Instead, what they’d like to see is the product “used under some stress or duress and how it’s received by caregivers, members, patients and their families,” said Dr. Scott Young, who serves as executive director and senior medical director of Kaiser Permanente’s Care Management Institute.
• They want you to produce “softer feedback” such as stories and testimonials directly from customers and users. “So many solutions claim to do the same thing,” said Karen Lee, innovation and strategic partnerships leader at Humana. “This softer feedback allows us to really get a feel for that experience and whether or not it’s effective.”
• They expect you to be able to nail down how your product meets their strategic objectives, and can help them achieve the specific outcomes they have in mind. If you can’t do that, though just reach out to someone who can.
• They want to bear in mind that even if they’re quite interested in what you’re doing, there’s typically a lot of politics to navigate before they can the pilot with your technology, much less implement fully. “Beyond the evidence, a successful pilot, and research, there are some complexities that you have to be patient and working through,” says Lee.
• Perhaps most importantly, they need to know that you’ve kept the patient in mind. “The patient needs to know how to use [your technology], and should be using it,” said Dr. Manoja Lecamwasam, executive director of intellectual property and strategic innovations at Dignity Health. “You have to first build that foundation – look at it there, and a lot of people want to talk to you.”

At this point, readers, I realize some of you are probably feeling frustrated, as it may seem that many potential digital health adopters have set the bar for adoption very high, even once you’ve proven that your solution works by most conventional methods. Still, it doesn’t hurt to get an idea of how the “other side” thinks.