Digital health start-ups can incorporate clinical expertise into their business models

Early signs indicate Funding for digital health startups dropped significantly in Q4 2022, approaching levels last seen in 2019.

But the amount alone doesn’t tell the whole story. How do we grow as a digital healthcare company? If you grow up at all

Companies built for the long term must have clinical experts as part of their leadership to ensure care is always based on the patient’s medical needs and to maintain quality control.

Here are some frameworks digital health startups can consider:

Make Clinicians Senior Leaders

The best-case scenario for a digital health startup is to have a clinician as a co-founder.

I speak from experience. My co-founder is a triple board certified psychiatrist and brings clinical expertise to everything she does. From evaluating product roadmap decisions with technical departments to strategy with the board From discussions to managing the entire clinical team, her contributions are vital to the health and direction of the company.

Outside of management, hiring clinicians as senior leaders with responsibilities beyond clinical operations is invaluable. The key is to make sure the clinician understands that they are reporting to another clinician and not to a non-clinical executive.

Nonclinical leaders, including founders and nonclinical executives, need to live what they preach. Even if there is no apparent clinical impact, clinical partners should be consistently engaged for business discussions.

The main advantages of taking this approach are:

• Clinical and non-clinical partnerships become more lively from the jump.
• Other team members and clinical staff see and respect inclusion.
• A clinician may discover something that has an indirect but significant clinical impact.

Beyond hiring clinicians in-house, startups should consider inviting clinicians to the board. Their participation on the board will help guide the company towards ethical and sustainable medical practices focused on helping patients, rather than being a technology company operating at the expense of patients.

This dedication to patient outcomes is a differentiator and should be reflected in all levels of work at a digital health startup.

Celebrate your provider’s dedication

Providing resources and space for full-time providers allows them to focus more on patient care.