How to launch a healthcare startup that will rock the market

Today’s healthcare industry is open to all kinds of technological innovations that can prove efficient in addressing problems with traditional processes and approaches. Many companies and startups are developing healthcare solutions that promise to bring enormous social value as well as significant business results. The demand for medtech solutions is growing as they become a new standard in the industry — a good sign for those who have promising healthcare startup ideas. In this article, we’ll discuss key things to bear in mind when you launch your own healthcare project.

Revenue in the global digital health industry is forecast to hit $193.7 billion in 2024 and to rise to almost $275 billion in 2028. That means the expected CAGR for the period from 2024 to 2028 will be over 9%. 

A strong boost to this industry came with the coronavirus pandemic. But with that emergency in the rearview mirror, the industry continues to expand. Many factors are contributing to this, including the general trend toward digitalization in every field.

People are more attentive to health and well-being now than ever before, taking care of themselves more proactively. So it’s not surprising at all that fitness and well-being solutions boast high popularity. At the moment, this constitutes the biggest group of digital health products. 

Competition in the medtech market is also growing, which means that it’s not enough to merely enter the market with a new product. It’s vital to have a good understanding of how to start a healthcare startup and win market share in a crowded field. Though the importance of strong promotion and marketing, as well as sufficient healthcare startup funding, shouldn’t be underestimated, the project’s success ultimately depends on the quality of the concept.

Healthcare startups can be classified according to the aspect/field of the industry they address. Here are some examples.

• Patient care. This is a high-demand and therefore crowded group of startups. These products offer personalized medical experiences to a wide audience of users. For example, apps that allow you to make appointments and consult online with doctors.
• Mental health. Mental health has become an increasingly important part of digital medicine. For example, many startups help to connect patients with therapists or provide tools for tracking changes in mood and monitoring your personal emotional state.
• Medical insurance. This type of project is aimed at dealing with insurance issues; it helps patients find the most appropriate plans, lodge insurance claims, and manage their policies.
• Nutrition. Eating well is vital to staying healthy and fit. These solutions help users find the correct approach to dieting and offer various recipes and tips.
• Fitness startups. Various solutions for home training sessions or aggregators of fitness centers, as well as apps with video Zumba or yoga classes, are included in this category.
• IoT projects. IoT healthcare startups provide various specialized smart medical devices and wearables that can help track various vital parameters in real-time. This allows doctors to monitor a patient’s health remotely. Such solutions can also be useful for self-monitoring, especially for patients who live with chronic disease.
• Medication and prescription management. Such products help doctors monitor prescribed medication and how it is being taken by individual patients. An app can also be used to provide information on where to buy or order necessary medications.

Potential ideas for a medical startup are restricted only by your imagination. But your project needs to be unique to stand out in a crowded field. We can share several general ideas that look promising amid ongoing market needs. Maybe they’ll inspire you to create something that doesn’t yet exist.

• AI-powered virtual medical assistants. What about a chatbot that provides basic health-related information to patients, evaluates the level of symptom severity, and gives step-by-step instructions for what to do? A virtual assistant should be able to redirect a person’s call or written inquiry to a specialist when necessary. This type of project could lower the demanding workloads of healthcare professionals.
• Medication reminder apps. Such apps need to be highly customizable and able to send notifications to a person when it’s time to take their medication.
• Senior care solutions. Such solutions are aimed at increasing the independence of elderly people and make independent living safer. It’s possible to create products that bring together a variety of useful tools such as wearables and smart medical devices, GPS trackers, and telemedicine apps with voice control.
• Robotics for surgeries. Some surgeries require almost superhuman precision. Robots fully managed by surgeons may perform with absolute accuracy.
• Online pharmacies. Such platforms can present products from different providers, allow users to compare them, order them, and read and write reviews. These apps can be enriched with advanced tools, such as AI-powered recommendations. Moreover, ML algorithms could be used to consider a user’s disease history and notify them if they are planning to buy something that may produce an allergic reaction or is incompatible with other medications they’re taking.

You’ll need to make a series of decisions before beginning to develop your project. Here’s a list of questions to ask yourself.

1. What market segment do you want to work in? Do you want to offer a solution that will address the needs of patients, doctors, or both? Do you want to provide a telemedicine solution? Or maybe you are planning to deal with robotics technologies? 
2. How exactly will your solution be helpful to users? Profits are important, but to succeed, medical startups need to demonstrate that they can improve the quality of healthcare and therefore the quality of life for patients.
3. Where will you find the resources to build your startup? If you can fund your project yourself, great. But in the vast majority of cases, startups need external funding through a variety of means: venture capital funds, angel investors, public or private funding, charitable grants, or support of an accelerator.
4. How will you attract investors? What will make your offer unique? Actually, this point is relevant regardless of the type of startup or product. You should know what your unique selling point is and what will encourage investors to support your project.
5. How will you earn money on your solution? There are a variety of monetization strategies: you can sell subscriptions, offer medical products, or provide some tools on a paid basis. You can cooperate with various brands and place ads in your app. Your choice should depend on what type of solution you offer. Not every monetization option will be a good choice for your project. 

Having developed an excellent concept marks a big step forward. But without a reliable team, you can’t move further. As we don’t know the peculiarities and needs of your project, it’s impossible for us to provide precise recommendations about the composition of your team. However, based on our experience, we can say that developing a medtech project usually takes the skills of the following experts:

• CTO
• Software developers
• QA engineers
• Designers
• Business analysts, etc.

What expertise you will need of your software engineers and designers will depend on the expected functionality of your medtech product and the tech stack used.

The first members on a team are its co-founders. Then they need to find specialists who not only have the required skills but share their vision of the industry and business in general and the future product in particular.

As a rule, co-founders assign (or start looking for) a chief technical officer who will deeply understand all the tech-related processes and take responsibility for a wide range of tasks.

Most medical startups don’t create big in-house teams or hire in-house developers. Thanks to a great variety of engagement models, every project can find an appropriate format for establishing cooperation with external developers. 

For example, you can opt for a dedicated development team model or project-based outsourcing. It all depends on your expectations and level of desire to participate in all steps of the development process. Working with a professional software development company will allow you to avoid a lot of administrative challenges.

There are plenty of companies offering their services. But we recommend you hire a team that has expertise in the chosen business domain. For example, at Cogniteq, healthcare is one of several business spheres that we focus on.

It’s a tough business world out there, and that’s the reality all medical startups should be prepared for. But that doesn’t mean that success is just a matter of luck. When considering the feasibility of building your own project, a well-thought-out business plan for a healthcare startup will be based on a clear understanding of current business conditions.

In one blog post, we can’t cover all the details of how to launch a healthcare startup. But we can highlight common mistakes made by teams who are just beginning their business journey.

1. Failing to analyze the real needs of potential users. Teams sometimes ignore the necessity to deeply analyze the expectations of patients and employees of medical organizations. As a result, their products turn out to be practically useless.
2. Lack of regulatory compliance. For medtech startups, it’s crucial to make their products fully compliant with all regulations and rules in force in the chosen jurisdictions, which can be especially complex in the medical field. Otherwise, they won’t get official permission to operate in the market.
3. Irrelevant monetization strategy and unrealistic financial expectations. Let’s be honest. We all want to earn millions. And it’s okay to have ambitious goals. But it is vital to have a clear vision of the situation and plan your financial strategy properly. Unfortunately, the expectations and monetization approaches of many startups don’t match reality. They simply can’t stay afloat in the market.
4. Low usability. When your idea itself seems cool but your solution is difficult to use (or impossible to find appropriate use cases for), your project is bound to fail. To catch up with the fastest growing healthcare startups, you need to make sure that your solution will easily attract attention from organizations and individuals. They’ll need to have a very clear understanding of how to use your product and its benefits in comparison to alternatives.
5. Poor tech realization. It’s vital to develop a solution that’s perfect from a technological standpoint. It should perform seamlessly on different devices, it should look and feel equally good, in accordance with current standards, and of course, it should be secure and reliable. To achieve such results, it’s necessary to have an experienced, professional development team by your side.

At Cogniteq, we work with distinctly different projects, but the healthcare industry is one of those domains where we’ve managed to accumulate the richest experience. The range of successfully launched solutions built by our developers is the best proof of this.

One product created for this industry is PRISM Therapy Online, a web platform that helps people find the best therapists and have consultations online. There are two available formats for consultations: you can communicate with a therapist either via live chat or via a video call.

The main idea is to provide users with the possibility of finding a specialist who has the appropriate expertise and qualifications to deal with the issues the patient wants to address. When users join the platform, they are asked to complete an online assessment. Based on the provided information, the app will offer three therapists who potentially could become the best choice for the person. 

The user can choose the specialist, the format for consultation, and the appropriate time. Payments are conducted online and processed via the Stripe service. If you’d like to learn more about this project, visit this link.

Launching a medtech startup can become an exciting journey. Without doubt, you’ll face a series of challenges and potential pitfalls that will require a lot of creativity and knowledge on your side. But given the current demand for tech solutions developed for the healthcare industry, it’s reasonable to expect that excellent business ideas in combination with high-quality development will bear fruit.

If you are looking for an experienced team that can provide you with professional assistance at any step of your medtech solution development, you can always contact us. At Cogniteq, we have deep expertise in working with healthcare tech projects and would be happy to contribute to the success of your startup.