What HealthTech Product Marketers and R&D Can Learn from Lyle Berkowitz

A few weeks ago, I attended a Health2Tech event here in Chicago. The event was hosted by an amazing man — Alex Koshykov — who somehow is running 2 starts ups, 2 YouTube channels and Health2Tech. I don't know if he ever sleeps, but that's a whole other conversation. Anyway, at the event, the guest speaker was Dr. Lyle Berkowitz and I found the discussion so refreshing.

As a marketer, several of these are tenants I've held for years when trying to work with startup founders, product marketers and R&D. But the way in which Lyle stated things gives a perspective that I hope start-ups, product managers/marketers and R&D teams can absorb and put into practice for success from the jump. I know I learned a few new tips in here as well so thought I'd share!

Get Crystal Clear on Your Stakeholders

You have a wonderful idea to solve a problem in healthcare and get to work starting to build it — you find some early stage funding or you bootstrap it yourself, or you pitch the idea to senior leadership to get buy in, you bring in a team of engineers, get more funding and get yourself close to launching it...and then you run into a marketer like me who asks you some fundamental questions—

1. Who is your audience?

2. Who is your end user?

3. Have you tested the product with several of those end users for feedback?

4. Do you have data or outcomes that I can use to promote the product?

While I know my questions are solid questions, I think the way Berkowitz stated things gets it across faster. You see, when he was in charge of innovation decisions at Northwestern Memorial, these were the questions he asked every sales person, product manager or founder who approached him:

1. Who is actually using your service or product? Is it the patient, the provider, the payor?

2. Who is paying for it?

3. Who actually benefits from it?

So quick, so succinct, and so completely focused on the stakeholders. If you are a founder or a product manager, you should be able to answer these questions before you spend a penny on building a product. This will allow you to shape your solution to ensure it's truly viable. And if you keep it as your focus throughout, your offering will be better, more likely to be successful and, selfishly to marketers like me, far easier and more compelling to promote.

Watch What People Do, Not Just What They Say

Of all Berkowitz's perspectives that I found amazing, as a nerd who loves digging into research and consumer behavior, this one was my favorite. I cannot tell you the amount of market research I've sat in on where customers or HCPs have stated they want a specific feature or they would totally use a specific product if it were in market. And then when you put the product in market, they don't buy in.

I also cannot tell you the number of times where I've had sales reps come back saying their customer refuses to buy xyz product unless it includes this one specific feature, R&D builds it and then the customer either doesn't buy or if they do buy, they don't ever use that feature that they asked for. And no other customer uses that feature either.

The lesson here for ALL of us is to go beyond just asking someone their opinion. Instead we need to observe their behaviors with a product and in their natural environment. For starters, you may realize that the feature they're thinking of is a great one that needs to be implemented and would benefit everyone. You could also realize there's a nugget of an idea there that you need to refine based on workflows and the environment in which your product may be used. Or you could realize that they had one single patient that it would have been nice for, but it really isn't relevant to literally anything or anyone else.

In marketing we'd call this an ethnographic study and these tend to be expensive to conduct. But if you can simplify the study style to be able to observe your stakeholders, imagine the innovations that could be unearthed or money and resources that could be saved just by sitting back and watching your potential customers do what they do?

Understand Your Buyer's Revenue Model

Next is Berkowitz's advice around the money. We need to remember not just who is paying for your product as a factor in understanding your stakeholders. You must also understand your customer's revenue model, their payment model and how that structure can affect the way that product benefits their customer, which in turn would affect how you'd create or promote your product.

For example, are you creating a solution that increases the throughput of patients? That’s great—if you’re targeting fee-for-service providers. Adding volume means more money for them. But your solution won't be viable to providers who are servicing capitated payment models like many HMOs. These folks are paid a set fee per month regardless of the number of patients they see. Most of the time they are trying to reduce unnecessary visits so throughput doesn't necessarily benefit them monetarily.

The lesson here is not in the merits of each payment model. Rather it's in factoring in which type of payment model clients are going to be most receptive to the challenge your product solves for.

I really like this concept because so much of the time, companies are looking for potential market sizing or opportunities with healthcare systems, but there are many situations where buyer revenue models are not being factored into things. Sure, whether the cost of your product hits their CapEx or OpEx budget is in the consideration set, but usually not in how it affects the buyer's revenue model.

And if you're trying to convince a health system to invest in your product (especially if your product is a pricey one), you need to not only convince buyers that the cost to them is reasonable, but also understand how it could impact the customer's revenue model positively or negatively. Being able to show how you can impact their revenue model in a positive way is gold.

Go Beyond Focusing on Efficiency, Focus on Ways to Eliminate Work from Existing Workflow

I've had this longstanding perspective that the 2010s were spent making products that can collect data and now in the '20s, we're in a phase of connecting those devices, all in the name of workflow efficiency. Whether it's to make documentation easier on nurses, reduce steps in any and all processes within a health system, etc., everything has been created by medtech companies and point solution companies to address inefficiency in a healthcare setting.

But Berkowitz had an interesting insight into HCPs that product makers don't realize — most physicians get used to their process and the steps they take to do something. It was trained into them, it's what makes them comfortable to ensure they get the job done. If you give them something that reduces the number of steps in a process by 10%, it's not enough to get them to change a learned habit. If you give them something that reduces their steps or workload by 50%, you're still probably not going to get full buy-in to adopt a net-new process.

And this makes sense to me. I can't tell you how many amazing digital products I was asked to promote that would help nurses or physicians with workflow efficiency. Yet, we heard over and over again that nurses still carried around post-it notes in their pockets of information and tasks. It's not that they don't wish to find efficiencies to make their jobs easier, it's that the solutions given to them have not proven to be easier than what they know how to do already within their process.

I remember at my last corporate job, we were working on evolving our brand strategy and an insight we received from customers was that the idea of innovation is overwhelming to HCPs and instead of trying to uproot and overhaul their process for workflow efficiency improvements, we needed to find a way to fit into their existing workflow. That combined with Berkowitz's insight above makes so much sense.

In other words, instead of trying to supplant an existing process that an HCP will resist or find overwhelming, we should aim to eliminate the process altogether from their workload. That way the HCPs no longer have to take the 5 steps or 12 steps in a process at all. Completely removing a process is far easier than asking people to change their process.

Bottom line, if it removes the task altogether, giving them time and energy for other things, that is innovation they will get on board with. That's the easiest way to find a solution that is compelling to this audience. This again takes us back to the first point of understanding your stakeholders, deeply.

Conclusions for HealthTech Companies

The Health2Tech event was amazing and Dr. Berkowitz's perspectives were profoundly helpful. The ones I'm covering only scratch the surface of the valuable insights he shared with the room. At the end of the day, his advice reminds us that real innovation in healthtech isn’t necessarily about big ideas that supplant what people already do—it’s about understanding your stakeholders and helping them with small, practical shifts that can make their day easier while aligning with the economic reality of healthcare. In other words, go by the K.I.S.S. mindset—Keep. It. Simple. Stupid.