Bohemian, Er, I Mean Health Tech Rhapsody

This post was originally published by Venture Valkyrie on April 2. By Lisa Suennen In my nearly 20 years in healthcare venture capital, I have heard at least 37 million pitches for technology solutions to help patients be healthy, get healthy, stay healthy, One of the questions I most frequently ask entrepreneurs is this: What patient research have you done? How many potential consumers/customers have you interviewed to know there is a market for your wares? Guess what the most common answer to this question is? Wait for it… None. That is often the answer. Seriously. Second place is “one,” as in “my grandma had congestive heart failure/fell and broke a hip/had a hangnail and so I built a whole company’s worth of product around her lone experience – behold my market of one! It never ceases to amaze me. Do you think the folks in consumer products invent stuff that they don’t test with dozens and hundreds and sometimes thousands of consumers first? Answer: hell no. Even the drug companies have to do clinical trials and figure out what works. For goodness sake, health technology people, get in the game. User-centered design is a pretty recent addition to the health care buzzword bingo board, but it’s a really important one. If you ascribe to the Field of Dreams strategy (if I build it, they will come), let me tell you how it ends: badly and surrounded by a bunch of very sad investors. I finally snapped this week when I heard yet another of these stories; a young C...
Source: Disruptive Women in Health Care - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs