Wrote Hacking Healthcare for O'Reilly, former hospital executive, built and operated hundred of hospitals and multi-practice groups. Created the open source ClearHealth/HealthCloud EMR and WebVista.
I advise a lot of health related startups. I think the list is OK but the two most important things I have seen come up over and over again are 'have a show pony' and KISS.
"Have a show pony" means you need to have a doctor associated with your business, idea, etc that is high profile and a public advocate for it. Doesn't necessarily mean as an employee or consultant, etc, that can get complex because of corporate practice of medicine regulations but advisory boards and research partners are often good fits. This lets you be taken seriously by what are extremely risk averse institutions in most cases, especially when dealing with "two guys and a hard drive" startups.
KISS is the old adage, keep it simple stupid, but really in healthcare the overwhelming high priority problems are insanely simple people issues. Getting people to wash their hands, getting patients to show up at the right time and the right place, having an organized and non-duplicative flow of operating information. A tremendous amount of healthcare is done via spreadsheet, think at that level. Complex solutions can be profitable but almost never endure and can be extremely hard to sell.
I advise a lot of health related startups. I think the list is OK but the two most important things I have seen come up over and over again are 'have a show pony' and KISS.
"Have a show pony" means you need to have a doctor associated with your business, idea, etc that is high profile and a public advocate for it. Doesn't necessarily mean as an employee or consultant, etc, that can get complex because of corporate practice of medicine regulations but advisory boards and research partners are often good fits. This lets you be taken seriously by what are extremely risk averse institutions in most cases, especially when dealing with "two guys and a hard drive" startups.
KISS is the old adage, keep it simple stupid, but really in healthcare the overwhelming high priority problems are insanely simple people issues. Getting people to wash their hands, getting patients to show up at the right time and the right place, having an organized and non-duplicative flow of operating information. A tremendous amount of healthcare is done via spreadsheet, think at that level. Complex solutions can be profitable but almost never endure and can be extremely hard to sell.
I think a lot can be gleaned about the general dysfuction of healthcare as an industry from this previous HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39186252