Healthcare Needs Solutions...Not More Products
Healthcare Innnovation's Latest "Wellness Visit" Findings
Healthcare’s innovation pipeline isn’t short on products....it’s short on purpose. Over-spec’d devices, chasing feature and function wars no one asked for, ultimately exposing a growing divide: product thinking vs. solution building.
Across too much of the healthcare and medtech industry, spanning devices large and small, technology and inclusive of AI in many forms, we are witnessing a chronic industry condition: technologies engineered for technical achievement rather than clinical relevance, operational simplicity, or measurable value.
The diagnosis is clear and pick your poison, as each may apply:
- Z99.99 — Chronic Feature Fatigue | Endless spec upgrades without solving real clinical or operational problems
- Z00.999 — Encounter for Device with No Clinical Value | Technologies that add workflow burden, not workflow clarity
- T82.89XAX — Malfunction of Innovation, Initial Encounter | Brilliant inventions that stall when they meet the complexity of real-world healthcare
Why This Matters Now
Healthcare is not buying devices anymore. It is buying outcomes, workflow efficiency, embedded decision support, elevated patient experience, and measurable system value.
Why? Because that’s what the system (and the market) demands. Yet too many companies still pursue strategies rooted in:
- Technical isolation — Building standalone products with no data liquidity or interoperability.
- Spec sheet escalation — Assuming more features equal commercial appeal… maybe adoption.
- Transactional selling — Pushing individual products rather than enabling care transformation.
The result? Devices that don't fit the market need. Workflows that don’t improve. Value propositions that don't resonate….and innovation efforts that burn capital without bending cost—curves in a socially optimal path.
The Solution-Centered Mindset: A Different Path Forward
To thrive, companies must fundamentally reset how they think about innovation, commercialization, and customer engagement strategically beginning with roadmaps and internal process.
A Comparison of Mindsets
| Dimension | Product-Centered Approach | Solution-Centered Approach |
| Technology Focus | Tech performance in isolation | Enable full care pathways and real-world clinical decisions |
| Development Priorities | More features, faster specs | Outcome measurement, interoperability, workflow fit |
| Go-To-Market Strategy | Sell devices based on spec superiority | Deliver bundled, interoperable solutions focused on outcomes |
| Provider Experience | Manual, fragmented integration | Embedded decision support, streamlined data flow |
| Payer Enablement | Little evidence, high prior auth friction | Clear value evidence, outcome-linked ROI pathways |
| Patient Experience | Disjointed, delayed diagnosis and treatment | Seemless escalation, faster answers and access, with better engagement |
It’s Not Enough to Just Build the Solution—Price, Package, and Deliver It Differently
Even the most elegant solution will stall without a commercial model that reflects its value. Solution-centered strategies must be paired with innovative go-to-market and approaches and innovative business models that lower adoption barriers and align incentives across stakeholders.
That includes advancing approaches for:
- Subscription or usage-based models that shift capital expense to operational ROI
- Outcome-based pricing that aligns with value-based care contracts
- Managed service models that bundle devices, software, services, and support into a turnkey care delivery platform
- Risk-sharing structures that allow provider organizations and payers to co-invest in transformation
Repackaging solutions through these models doesn't just make adoption easier — it makes value tangible.
Interoperability is no longer optional.
It must go beyond technical checkboxes
- Contractual interoperability may open access
- Technical interoperability may transmit data
- Semantic interoperability may translate meaning
But business and clinical interoperability are what unlock system value. They empower organizations to:
- Support seamless patient journeys
- Empower providers with real-time, actionable data and CDS
- Enable payers to recognize and reward value without excess friction
- Drive continuous evidence generation and outcomes validation
Disconnected devices — even powerful ones — don’t create scalable change. Connected systems do. As I have stated previously, solving the “less sexy” problems may in fact be the most attractive solution because that is where monotony, burnout and fragmentation live.
Solution Thinking Across the Care Continuum
Imagine a typical patient journey:
- Screening Stage: Early risk detection through wearable tech, AI-enhanced screening tools, and predictive analytics
- Diagnostic Stage: Seamless escalation from point-of-care diagnostics (e.g., ultrasound, ECG) to advanced imaging and specialist consultation without fragmentation or friction
- Treatment Planning: Integrated data platforms, AI-enabled decision support, and interdisciplinary care coordination that accelerate time-to-treatment and reduce variability.
- Ongoing Management: Remote patient monitoring, home-based diagnostics, and population health platforms that prevent readmissions and lower the long-term cost of care.
Every product, platform, or service should map to (AND ENHANCE) this continuum.
If you can’t connect your offering to meaningful improvement across the entire patient and provider journey and to the value chain, you’re not delivering a solution. You’re delivering a widget.
The Future Belongs to Solution Builders
Healthcare should no longer tolerate technological brilliance that doesn’t translate to clinical relevance, operational value, and financial sustainability and to help our patients most, we need to lean in differently.
I may be wrong, but I feel strongly that the healthcare and healthtech companies that will lead the next decade will:
- Design for workflows horizontally across the continuum, not in fragmented silos
- Prove outcomes, not just pitch features
- Build systems of success, not just sell products
Anything less isn’t innovation or optimization — it’s inertia. “Chronic feature fatigue is treatable” but only if we stop assuming treatment success equates to specs, features and functions, and instead start delivering microdoses (and maybe macrodoses) of system-focused transformation.
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Disclaimer: The ICD-10 codes referenced in this article (Z99.99, Z00.999, T82.89XA) are used satirically to illustrate common challenges in the medtech industry. They are not real clinical codes and should not be interpreted as actual medical classifications.
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