From Innovation to Market: Do You Have a Healthcare Plan?

Pundits and prognosticators are practically giddy about the global post-pandemic healthcare innovation opportunities. 

At the same time, the entrepreneurs who are working diligently to transform international sick care to health care have to overcome many obstacles and overcome the cynicism about shiny objects, snake oil and trusting biomedical and clinical entrepreneurs. The most recent example is the number of people around the world who say they won't get the COVID-19 vaccine.

Another example is the lessons learned from accelerated deployment of telemedicine and virtual care. 

Having a go to market plan and a strategic communications plan is important, but not enough. The most difficult part is engrafting your innovation into a customer culture, dominating your product category, and, in the case of sick-care, making it the standard of care over time. In other words, how do you plan to change doctor and stakeholder behavior over the long run?

The parts of your innovation to market (I2M) plan should include:

• Discover customer's pain, wants and needs.
• Design a product with a compelling value proposition.
• Develop your product based on early and often end user and stakeholder feedback.
• Deploy your solution with a go to market and strategic communications plan that tells why you are the best of the rest,
• Dominate your product category.
• Disseminate and implement your product by building into it those features and benefits that will overcome the barriers to widespread adoption, penetration, engagement and enable behavior change
• Define the delta i.e. measure and showcase the before and after value difference you promised your customers you would deliver.

Finding someone to buy your product is only the beginning. If you don't follow up with the other steps, in fact, it might just be the beginning of the end of your company.

Arlen Meyers, MD, MBA is the President and CEO of the Society of Physician Entrepreneurs.