Sickcare entrepreneurs face many hurdles trying to navigate the innovation roadmap.

One that is particularly important, but frequently overlooked, is how their intervention will impact those responsible for workflow and dissemination and implementation.

Consequently, as part of your analysis and planning, you should make the "WHAT is happening now" checklist: Workflow and Handoff Analysis Tracker.

Give yourself 10 points if you have considered each of the following and explained how you intend to address the issues:

Do you have a thorough understanding of the people, systems and workflows required now to make something happen? What would be better if they used your product? What about EMR integration and interoperability? Have you identified bottlenecks, gaps or inefficiences that your solution will specifically fix or improve? Have you determined the roles of each of the stakeholders you need to convince to pilot, pay for or use your product e.g influencers, payors, decision makers, champions, sabateurs, end users, intermediate users? The roles are as follows (though it’s important to note some job titles might occupy more than one role):

1. Initiator: Starts the buying process or shows initial interest
2. User: Uses your product regularly
3. Influencer: Convinces others the product is needed
4. Decision maker: Gives final approval for the purchase
5. Buyer: Owns the budget
6. Approver: Final approver who pushes the initiative on a larger scale (typically someone in the C-suite)
7. Gatekeeper: Blocker in getting a product implemented or approved
8. Sabateur : Goes out of their way to prevent buying your product or service
9. Regulators: People who make the rules
10. Third parties: Intermediaries, like insurors, PBMs or others who play a role in the decision

Do you have a value proposition for each of the above that does the job they want you to do? How can you make adopting your solution a priority?

Do you understand your target's decision making process and people, the time it takes to make decisions and their budgeting and payment rules?

Are you sure you are solving the right problem with the biggest impact?

Is your business model viable, particularly your revenue model?

Do you have a plan to overcome the regulatory and cybersecurity issues?

Do you have a convincing go to market strategy and ways to overcome the barriers to dissemination and implementation? For example, we are seeing a lot of AI sickcare "solutions". But, when do stakeholders trust the word of a machine, and when do they resist it?

Have you accumulated evidence that validates your assumptions about the above questions?

How did you do? Is it time to persevere, pivot, polish or pull the plug?

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