As the AMA celebrates Women in Medicine Month, PIN will be highlighting innovations that promote access and overall well-being for patients who identify as women.
Physicians, care team members, and other innovation leaders will be asking women’s health companies about the healthcare problems they are solving, the solutions they’ve designed, the barriers they’ve experienced in bringing their solutions to market, and the processes they’ve been using to gather user feedback.
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We always work directly with providers for our provider-based product so we can quickly iterate and build exactly what will be most helpful for them. As our product is enabling advanced dermatology care, we also work closely with dermatologists to test any changes in advance of rolling out solutions.
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Answering the question on feedback on solutions from the entrepreneur perspective, I think it is important to start by mapping out the patient life cycle from beginning to end, addressing where gaps in care may exist and who along the way can help.
First, identify a need, I work in stroke care using blood testing to identify cause in the 40% of patients that never have a cause determined called “cryptogenic stroke”. Related to this problem is that women have a 1 in 5 likelihood of experiences in a stroke and are often overlooked for atrial fibrillation that if undetected carries a 5 times risk of recurrent stroke. I hope this outlines a need.
Second, think about how the patient, hospital, clinician, post hospital care, and payer operate today and why the gap in care exists. When I was a Chaired Professor, I taught frameworks from a book called Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers. There are many frameworks and models available, but the point is to think about all users and how you can explain something easily. This takes practice and multiple attempts, so don’t get discouraged.
Third, some products are difficult to gain feedback on without a working model, so think about how you can be creative and find an analogy that you can point to. Since there were no blood tests for stroke prior to Ischemia Care, we had to find examples of devices in cardiology or blood testing in cancer to explain how things work. Point to your own experiences and back them up with data.
Forth, since this is a healthcare forum, think about how payers will ultimately look at your product. Think about all payers; private, CMS, Medicaid, uninsured, etc. This can help you with where your product fits in the care continuum and maybe unveil a very specific need.
Fifth, a great place to start is with accelerator programs. These programs offer a lot of great mentors and experienced professionals that share their time and talent. I have been a part of MedTech Innovator, Matter Health, Gener8tor, and Prime Health Care. Many of these programs offer great step by step approaches for any stage of idea.
https://medtechinnovator.org/
https://matter.health/
https://www.gener8tor.com/
https://www.primehealthco.com/challenge
Finally, go to people you don’t know for advice, it's easy to rely on your network and experience, but the best feedback will come from people you may not know now, but could become big supporters in the future. This is how I created a network of 20+ hospitals to gain valuable feedback and it was not always glowing, but it was supportive.
I hope you read this response in the spirit of there is not “one” path, just get started and see who joins you along the way. Before you know it, you will be on your way to success! Also keep in mind steps can be iterated, you will always be learning and changing how you view the market and may even become a subject matter expert on a panel.
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One challenge is bringing awareness to women's health and the need for better innovation and advancements in treatment. AI, ML both offer new opportunities to expand therapeutic options and investigate where unmet needs may exist globally. Ensuring clinical trials and real world studies have diverse populations included are necessary to appropriately treat and address the unmet needs for women's health and other diseases.
Pending
I strongly believe that any developer, innovator, company etc. need to to include the patient perspective at every touchpoint within the product development cycle so that they can truly design with inclusion in mind. And for representation, we need to acknowledge that one women can not represent all women, and as such include women from different racial/ethnic, SES and age groups accordingly depending on the solution for the specific health problem at hand. Women's health innovation needs EMPATHY...and having an "empathy champion" included as an integral part of all product development discussions/processes can ensure the solution will be "kind" to the woman end user...for example Mammograms are not fun, speculums are not fun (who invented those- men) both are critical prevention and diagnostic tools...so as a innovators working in women's health we can aim to do better and develop "kind" health solutions through human centered design.