If You Build It Will They Come?
A field of fragmented dreams
So you want to fix healthcare.
GREAT! You look back at what you have experienced and what your family has gone through.
You think to yourself “if I get handed a clipboard from the front desk again I am going to scream!”
You are thinking about the time when your grandmother was visiting you and fell ill and the hospital did not have any of her records. Not only did you have to take care of her, but you also had to figure out how to obtain her records from the other hospital. The stress was unnecessarily amplified. We live in a connected system! Why is this so hard!?!?
This is where everything falls apart in healthcare. WE live in a world of connected systems but healthcare does not. Don’t let people fool you into thinking we do. Yes, some aspects are connected but most everything is a fragmented hell.
You can log onto Zapier right now and start automating your emails and slack groups. The internet world is built on interconnectivity and API’s. Healthcare is not.
So back to your solution of getting rid of intake forms. You approach a hospital or clinic and they will tell you they LOVE the idea! You are on cloud nine.
There are two ways this conversation can really go from here.
Scenario 1: Instant Soul Crushing
They will ask you does it work with their EHR/EMR, and you will talk about how amazing your user experience is. You’ll throw out all the buzzwords like synergy, gamification, AI/ML, etc. to no avail. Now you have fallen from cloud nine to face first on the ground.
Scenario 2: Delayed Soul Crushing
Your barrage of buzzwords worked and they want to try it out! They tell you they will pilot it for six months and see how they like it.
Fast forward six months they tell you that they had poor adoption from their patients and staff. You ask for feedback. They tell you that their patients don’t want to fill out a form in another application when they already have a patient portal at the hospital. The staff was still having to transcribe the information into the chart so they started going back to doing it the old-fashioned way.
In both scenarios, you may have solved a slice of the problem but you did not solve the main problem. The main problem is interoperability. It is great that I have an intake form with my past medical history and medication list, but we still have to transcribe it into the chart so what have we solved?
Lifting Your Soul
Like those people in the scenarios, I am not a crusher of souls. I am going to tell you how to make a viable solution.
Identify your problem - Easy you’ve got this one covered!
Look for competitors - A quick google search can answer that for you. If there are competitors then see how they approach the problem. How can you make it better? If there aren’t any then this is either amazing or terrible. You may have either stumbled upon a niche you can dominate or others have tried and failed before you.
Seek out potential customers - Find people that not only know the problem well but will also be honest with you. Ask them everything. Break every action down into its most granular form. If they live close enough see if they will even let you shadow them. Do this throughout your process. You might find that you need to pivot to another idea. If you do repeat steps 1-3.
Get Commitments - Once you have come up with your idea go back to your potential customers and ask if they will test or even buy your solution once completed. You will find out very quickly how big of a problem this is for them. If they say yes then they are motivated to find a solution. If they are waffling back and forth then either find other people or this might not be as big of a problem as you had thought.
Build your product and go off to the races! - You already have a list of testers/customers
Some things to keep in mind when you’re building
Don’t forget about the clinician - If you improve the clinician’s life you will improve the patient’s life.
Who’s going to pay for it - You may have the greatest solution but if you haven’t figured out how you’re going to make money then you don’t have a business. Don’t figure it out as you go. Figure this out as early as possible!
Think about interoperability - Healthcare is a desolate wasteland of boutique solutions that do not connect. Please don’t add to that.
Either you integrate with their EMR/EHR or you work in the background where they don’t even know you’re there - Most people do not want to log into 4 different applications. If you can’t do either, you better have the greatest user experience known to man.
Keep it simple - Write all your features down and remove everything that is not at the core mission of your solution. Use existing infrastructure that people are already familiar with.
Hire an expert - It is astounding to me how many healthcare startups don’t have a healthcare person on their staff. Below is a simple equation for why you should hire us:
Time = Money
Money = Make you happy
Experts = Time Saved
Time Saved = Money
Experts = Make You Happy
Until very recently healthcare moved at a snail’s pace. You need to go ask yourself if you are willing to do this for 10 years. If the answer is yes then proceed. If you need people for step three feel free to reach out to me. I love talking to people who share a common goal!
Healthcare is hard but together we can make it better!
If you want to hear about my failed startup, leave a comment below.
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I hope you have a great day!