The amount of money flowing into startups that offer healthcare tech is staggering. Studies indicate that since 2013, venture capitalists have invested nearly $4.3 billion into startups looking to improve patient outcomes. However, developing medical technology has posed unique challenges that startup business owners often do not encounter in other fields. Despite the enormous investment and magnitude of startup opportunities, too many efforts fail. So, why is innovation unsuccessful in the healthcare sector? In this article at MedCity News, Katie Adams talks to various chief information officers (CIOs) about how startups should co-develop products with healthcare providers to address the inefficiencies in the sector.
Healthcare Tech: Challenges Startups Face
Technology Capabilities Fail to Match the Hype
In several instances, implementing artificial intelligence (AI) and other technologies did not live up to the hype. Many CIOs believe AI offers algorithms to help with sentiment analysis, image recognition, and speech-to-text transcription. However, startups do not have a system to tie these tools together and provide real insights.
High-Quality Health Datasets Are Fragmented
To build innovative healthcare tech, startups require relevant, accurate, and representative data. Sourcing high-quality and comprehensive data is one of the biggest obstacles for startups. Additionally, CB Insights indicates that the US has no standard format for recording data. Also, there is no central repository of patient data.
People Are Not Proactive
Startups offering consumer-facing healthcare tech often convince patients to download the applications. This means consumers were less enthusiastic about digital services provided by hospitals and medical practitioners. Surveys indicate that patients like the idea of telemedicine. However, they failed to trust medical applications and teleconsultation regarding specific health concerns.
How Can Healthcare Tech Startups Overcome These Pitfalls?
“It’s important that we open up this dialogue between frontline caregivers and industry so that we have the opportunity from the technology side to create solutions for the challenges that our frontline caregivers are experiencing,” says Joel Ray, Rex Healthcare’s vice president of patient care and chief nursing officer. Additionally, tech startups must take a careful approach and consider these pitfalls before developing medical technology. Otherwise, AI can have a negative impact by increasing burn-out rates for doctors and snowballing costs due to regulations and litigation. Furthermore, it can also erode patients’ trust in modern medicine.
CIOs believe that the tech sector must effectively collaborate with regulators, healthcare practitioners, and administrators to offer efficient technology that medical practitioners can implement in clinics and hospitals’ operating models.
To read the original article, click on https://medcitynews.com/2022/06/startups-must-warm-up-to-provider-workflows-to-create-effective-tech-healthcare-cio-says/.
