The makings of a great health tech product

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Hey Health Techies!

It’s no secret that there is no shortage of problems to be solved in healthcare. The system is filled with annoying painpoints, from a lack of transparency in patient data access to weak communication channels across providers.

At the heart of solving these problems are great practitioners and (if we’re lucky) great health tech products to help them do their best work. This means tools that are well-designed, intuitive to use, and solve both clinician and patient pain points.

So I thought I’d talk a little today about the makings of a great healthcare product.

👀 A focus on user-centered design

A great health tech product is built on user-centered design, meaning it’s developed with the end-user in mind from the start. That could be clinicians, patients, caregivers, or some combination of these.

This may seem obvious, to build for real users and to solve their real problems, but in many cases people get so excited that they can build something, they don’t always stop to think whether they should. Taking this approach is a surefire way to build a piece of tech that may impress in the short-term but is likely to struggle with adoption.

The user-centered approach is particularly important in healthcare where it’s important that products fit naturally into the workflow rather than complicate it. As a clinician, you bring valuable insights into what users need and how they work, helping product teams create tools that solve real-world problems effectively.

For example, a product like a streamlined electronic health record (EHR) system that minimizes clicks or captures notes using AI exemplifies user-centered design. It solves a clinician problem (lack of time) and if done right improves the users’ overall experience of using the tool. Which brings us to…

🧑🏻‍💻 Usability

Usability is about how easy a product is to use, especially in fast-paced environments like hospitals or clinics. When products are intuitive and efficient, they’re more likely to be adopted and used correctly, which directly impacts their effectiveness.

Clinicians transitioning into tech can play a significant role in usability testing, offering valuable insights into a product’s practicality.

♿︎ Accessibility

A good product considers all users including those with different abilities. This is known as product accessibility. Accessibility isn’t just a design buzzword, it’s a commitment to creating inclusive solutions that cater to diverse patient populations. From voice commands to designs that incorporate large text and screen size considerations, accessible design allows users of all abilities to benefit from a product.

🔁 Interoperability

Interoperability is the ability of a health tech product to communicate and share data across different platforms, such as EHRs, remote patient monitoring systems, and billing systems. It’s crucial in healthcare, where reducing the silos in data flow can mean the difference between an accurate diagnosis and an incomplete one. Without interoperability, clinicians and administrators are left hopping from one system to another trying to piece together information to see the whole picture.

🔐 Data Privacy 

This isn’t the last pillar in good healthcare product development, but it’s certainly a big one worth mentioning. In healthcare, a product without proper data privacy and security measures in place is pretty much a non-starter.

As health tech products handle increasingly sensitive information, strong privacy and security measures are critical. These include encryption, secure logins, HIPAA compliance, and regular security audits to ensure that data remains protected.

Even those products that take strong safety measures can fall prey to bad actors trying to gain access to personal information. Take the February cyberattack of Change Healthcare as an example. This wasn’t a small startup that didn’t have proper measures in place. This was a huge company processing billions of healthcare transactions every year. Even when security is prioritized from the beginning, it still must be properly maintained and tested over time.

Which really goes for all of these qualities. You don’t just build perfectly once with all of these things in mind and call it done. Product building is about iteration and innovation over time. It’s about constant prioritization of which problems are the right ones to solve and when which is exceedingly difficult in an industry where lives are at stake.

As a clinician, never forget that you bring unique insights that can help shape products that truly meet the needs of both patients and providers. We still have a lot of work to do.

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Until next time,

Lauren