The Importance Of Strong Partnerships For Healthcare Technology Startups

A startup that exists solely on its own is little more than a collection of good ideas without a home. Startups in the healthcare industry depend on partnerships with larger healthcare organizations, hospitals or other technology companies to help their ideas gain traction and make their way into the market.

What are the best ways for startups to forge these essential relationships?

1. Connect with partners daily. Don’t build an app in a vacuum. Learn about partners’ specific needs and find out how to best address those needs. Develop relationships with multiple people within an organization or hospital to become a trusted collaborator. If something doesn’t go as planned in the development process, the organization is more likely to continue a working relationship if multiple team members truly believe it is just a slight detour from accomplishing the overall goal.
2. Include your partners in the process. Partners should feel like they have a stake in the development of a product. Input from all stakeholders is necessary and flexibility to adjust and allow the product to evolve to better meet their needs will serve all stakeholders well.
3. Exemplary customer service is a must. It’s important to be accessible during all phases of project development. Partner’s value timely responses. Healthcare providers don’t have time to wait around when technology isn’t working. A partner should feel like a top priority and interactions should be meaningful.
4. Solicit feedback – and act on it. Create a system where partners can easily share concerns and ask questions. Concerns should be logged and monitored so appropriate changes can be made to ensure that the product continues to meet a partners’ needs. When feedback does not require changes, it is still important to communicate to a partner the reason changes are not needed. Partners need to feel heard.
5. Add to your network of partners. Data extraction companies such as Healthjump can help quickly deliver on agreements, providing the means to obtain clear, organized data so a new app will work as intended. Trusting an outside company to gain access to data that resides within health information systems, can free up time to focus on developing an app.