CJ

5 Reasons to Solve for Adoption Before Building Your Digital Health Tool

You built a great digital health product. Clinicians love the idea. But no one is buying. Why?

Too many companies start with a great idea, build the tech first, and then struggle to get adoption.

Hospitals, payers, and health systems don't buy tech just because it works—they buy solutions that:

✔ Fit into their existing workflows
✔ Meet compliance requirements
✔ Deliver measurable ROI

Before you write a single line of code, solve for adoption first. Here's why.

1. The Person Writing the Check Doesn't Use the App

The end-user isn't the buyer, and the buyer isn't the end-user.

If you don't sell to both, your product won't gain traction.

The Disconnect

You build a great app, but:

  • Clinicians don't push for adoption
  • IT de-prioritizes it
  • Leadership won't approve the budget

Why This Happens

In healthcare, purchasing decisions involve multiple stakeholders:

The Clinical Champion loves your product but has no budget authority. They need to convince IT, procurement, and executive leadership.

The IT Department cares about security, integration complexity, and vendor management. Your beautiful UX doesn't matter if it creates support headaches.

The CFO wants to see clear ROI metrics and implementation costs. "Better patient outcomes" isn't enough—they need numbers.

How to Bridge the Gap

Start by mapping your stakeholder journey:

  1. Identify all decision makers early in the sales process
  2. Create different value propositions for each stakeholder type
  3. Build coalition selling into your go-to-market strategy
  4. Provide ROI calculators and implementation timelines upfront

2. Integration Strategy Is More Important Than Your MVP

A great user experience doesn't matter if your product can't integrate with hospital workflows.

Where Most Products Get Stuck

🚨 Custom integrations per client create scalability problems
🚨 Assuming FHIR alone is enough for seamless data exchange
🚨 Overlooking egress data requirements and ongoing maintenance

The Reality of Healthcare IT

Most health systems run on legacy infrastructure that's been patched together over decades. Your modern API-first architecture needs to play nice with:

  • EHR systems (Epic, Cerner, Allscripts) with different data models
  • HL7v2 interfaces that predate REST APIs by 20 years
  • Custom databases built by long-gone contractors
  • Security protocols that assume everything is a threat

How to Solve It

✅ Predefine how data moves in and out of your system
✅ Plan for multiple integration paths (FHIR, HL7v2, custom APIs, file exports)
✅ Don't assume API access is easy - build for the worst-case scenario

Design your data architecture with these principles:

Start with standards, plan for exceptions. Build FHIR-first, but have backup plans for non-compliant systems.

Make data portable. Health systems need to own their data. If you make it hard to export, they won't buy.

Think in workflows, not features. How does your data fit into existing clinical workflows? Where does it go after your system processes it?

3. FHIR Marketplaces Won't Drive Adoption for You

What I Thought vs. Reality

❌ Expectation: Once you're listed in an EHR marketplace, hospitals will start adopting
✅ Reality: Hospitals still require custom integration work and direct sales engagement

The Marketplace Mirage

Getting listed in Epic's App Orchard or Cerner's marketplace feels like validation. And it is—for your product. But it's not a distribution strategy.

Here's what actually happens:

  1. Approval process takes 6-12 months of back-and-forth with vendor review teams
  2. Listing doesn't guarantee visibility among thousands of other apps
  3. Hospitals still need implementation support that requires direct sales relationships
  4. Custom configurations are almost always required for enterprise deployments

What Works Instead

✅ Use marketplaces for validation, not distribution
✅ Sell directly to health systems first to build case studies
✅ Leverage marketplace approval as a trust signal in direct sales

Focus your early energy on:

Direct relationships with health system innovation teams and clinical champions who can pilot your solution.

Reference customers who will speak at conferences and provide case studies for future sales.

Integration partnerships with system integrators who already have health system relationships.

4. Without a Champion, Your Product Won't Get Deployed

What Happens Without a Champion

  • IT deprioritizes your implementation
  • Training gets postponed indefinitely
  • Usage drops off after initial pilot
  • Contract renewal becomes uncertain

The Champion Profile

Successful digital health adoptions always have an internal champion who:

Has clinical credibility - Respected by peers, understands workflows
Understands technology - Can bridge clinical and IT requirements
Has organizational influence - Can navigate approval processes
Is personally invested - Sees your solution solving their specific problem

How to Identify and Cultivate Champions

Look for the frustrated innovator. Find clinicians who are already trying to solve the problem you address with spreadsheets, workarounds, or manual processes.

Provide value before asking for anything. Share research, invite them to advisory boards, make introductions to other innovators.

Make them the hero. Frame your solution as enabling their vision, not replacing their expertise.

Support their internal advocacy. Provide them with presentation materials, ROI calculations, and peer references.

5. Don't Wait for Regulatory Changes to Build Your Product

The Waiting Game

Healthcare moves slowly. If you're building for regulatory changes that haven't happened yet, you're gambling with runway.

Why This Approach Fails

Regulations change slowly - What seems inevitable may take years or get watered down
Implementation varies - Even when regulations pass, health systems interpret them differently
Market timing matters - Being too early is often worse than being too late

How to Build for Today While Preparing for Tomorrow

Solve current pain points with existing regulations and reimbursement models
Design flexible architectures that can adapt to future regulatory changes
Build for the most restrictive environment - If it works in heavily regulated markets, it works everywhere

The Pragmatic Approach

Start with what health systems need today:

Cost reduction through workflow automation
Quality improvement through better data visibility
Compliance support for existing regulations
Revenue cycle optimization within current reimbursement models

Then design your platform to evolve as regulations change, rather than betting everything on future policy shifts.

The Bottom Line: Solve Adoption First, Build Second

The most successful digital health tools aren't just well-built—they're strategically positioned for organizational adoption.

Your Pre-Build Checklist

✅ Map all stakeholders in the purchasing decision
✅ Define integration requirements for your target health systems
✅ Identify potential champions in your target market
✅ Validate willingness to pay with current reimbursement models
✅ Plan for regulatory compliance without betting on future changes

The Adoption-First Mindset

Before you write your first line of code, answer these questions:

  1. Who has the budget to buy your solution?
  2. What workflows will your product integrate with?
  3. Who will champion your solution internally?
  4. How will you prove ROI to financial decision makers?
  5. What happens if current regulations don't change?

If you can't answer these questions confidently, you're not ready to build yet.

The graveyard of digital health startups is full of technically brilliant products that solved real problems but couldn't navigate organizational adoption.

Don't join them.

Build for adoption first. Everything else is just features.