As vice president of digital health strategy at the American Medical Association, Meg Barron has spent a great deal of time talking with healthcare providers about the digital tools they’re using and how they adopted these technologies.
Through this work, she has recognized that providers often have a checklist of requirements they use to determine whether they should bring a new platform or piece of technology into their organization. Digital health startups would be wise to learn about these criteria when taking their products to market, Barron said last week at HITLAB’s Innovators Summit in New York City.
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There are four main requisites providers are looking for when it comes to digital health tools, she said.
The first thing that healthcare delivery organizations need vendors to do is demonstrate that their product is trustworthy and based on clinical evidence. In addition to this, vendors must prove that providers will have liability coverage if something goes wrong with the product — Barron pointed out that this is especially important from a data security and privacy standpoint.
Digital health companies also need to show providers that their tool has a fair reimbursement pathway. Given that most providers operate on thin margins, they are unlikely to have their clinicians use or prescribe products that lack coverage from insurers.
The final requirement that Barron listed was that vendors have to show their product’s ability to easily fit into clinical and operational workflows. Digital health companies must prioritize this consideration, because new technology often goes unutilized at hospitals when clinicians have a difficult time integrating the tool into their daily work processes.
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Seamless adoption can be tricky for healthcare organizations to achieve, which is why the AMA has published technology implementation playbooks for providers to follow, Barron said.
“While the target audience for the playbooks is physicians, private practices and large health systems, we’ve also heard from a lot of founders. They say ‘Oh, we’ve been using this as a mini Bible of sorts,’” she declared.
Getting familiar with the ins and outs of providers’ technology implementation process enables vendors to build tools that adhere to potential customers’ criteria, Barron explained. In order to develop technology that will effectively save clinicians time and improve patient outcomes, startups must have a strong understanding of day-to-day provider workflows — that way, companies can ensure that their product doesn’t disrupt these processes, she added.
In addition to its technology implementation playbooks, the AMA also gives providers guidance about how to assess new tools’ return on investment. This is another resource that startups can use to understand what healthcare delivery organizations want out of their technology, Barron pointed out. Oftentimes, providers want to adopt technology that goes beyond just short term financial ROI — they are interested in technology that can produce long-term benefits, such as improved health equity or better population health.
If a startup has not worked with many provider organizations, it could lack the insider knowledge it needs to build tools that are useful for clinicians. Exploring the frameworks and guidelines that providers use to inform their digital health strategies can help young digital health companies circumvent this problem and cater to clinicians’ needs, Barron explained.
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