The healthcare industry is facing significant disruption from new market entrants and technology innovations that have the potential to improve how care is delivered, to lower healthcare costs, and to improve healthcare outcomes. But not all disruption is built to have a sustained and positive impact—how do you tell which innovative technologies and ventures will change healthcare for the better, and which are just noise?

We all hear about disruptive innovation – the power of innovative thinking that sees beyond traditional ways of doing things in favor of new, better methods. When innovators enter the health arena and consider its problems creatively, they seek to break down inefficient aspects that don’t work well for stakeholders and patients. Problems can arise, however, if these innovators simultaneously disrupt processes or protective expectations that serve important functions. Healthcare is a heavily regulated and normative environment—for good reason. Many of its laws and norms function to keep patients safe and clarify roles and responsibilities. This post explores key considerations for new entrants into the healthcare marketplace.

Know Your Audience

To help ensure that disruption is constructive, make sure you understand the needs of your customers and their obligations to their customers and internal stakeholders. Because hospitals, health plans and providers, for example, must operate within a complex regulatory environment, your product or service needs to take those constraints into account. No matter how powerful your technology is, if it shifts regulatory burden onto your customers’ shoulders, it risks being unadoptable.

Data privacy presents a [...]

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