The medical software market is estimated to be worth $104.1 billion by 2030. As healthcare constantly evolves, the need for healthcare software to keep up is vital. However, taking healthcare software to market involves various challenges, as many rules, regulations, and requirements must be followed. New entrants might also face difficulties with long sales cycles and high costs for product development when bringing new software to market. This article highlights the challenges of software development and the benefits of a go-to-market (GTM) strategy.
Developing healthcare software is a complex process that requires a combination of technical expertise and a deep understanding of the healthcare industry. The software must be able to handle vast amounts of patient information, provide meaningful data to healthcare providers, and comply with all regulatory and security requirements, such as HIPAA and the 21st Century Cures Act. HIPAA violations can lead to penalties ranging from thousands to millions of dollars.
A company seeking to develop healthcare software will need technical expertise and appropriate input from end users. Software coders developing software will need to be familiar with how to build a platform that’s useful for patients, providers, and healthcare administrators. However, the features within the software must also allow providers and healthcare administrators to perform their day-to-day activities efficiently and effectively. Moreover, the software that a new organization develops must coexist and integrate well with the data and systems that healthcare entities already have.
A unique aspect of the healthcare industry is that providers, hospitals, and other third-party players are fragmented and the way that healthcare is practiced is regionalized. This makes it challenging to adapt to the different preferences and practices of various organizations and providers. Fragmented healthcare also allows for a wide variety of healthcare software to already exist, making it harder to understand how to integrate new technology with existing software at different organizations.
As a result, developing and bringing to market new healthcare software can be time consuming and costly because a new organization interested in developing software must understand the complex and multifaceted healthcare software ecosystem.
The challenges of software development for healthcare can significantly impact the pace at which a product goes to market. It can be difficult to balance the need to develop a product that fits the preferences of enough customers with the ability to customize and alter the product based on individual customer needs. Finding healthcare providers willing to give their time to provide feedback can be time consuming and costly. In order to bring a healthcare IT product to market quickly and effectively, organizations may need support from experienced partners who can help organizations with a GTM strategy.
A GTM strategy is a plan that organizations create to identify the competitive advantage of the product they are about to invest resources into developing and to determine how they will reach target customers. This early planning can help an organization increase its chances of technology adoption, reduce technology development time, and minimize costs associated with customer acquisition.
Working with partners can help organizations overcome the challenges of healthcare software development. An ideal partner has worked with many different organizations and will use their experience to ease the process of developing and taking a product to market. They have seen a wide variety of health IT systems and understand the various problems, such as communication with third parties. Moreover, partners can support the organization by finding key players to help their product reach the market successfully and identifying the skills that software developers and customer support team members need. With the experience that partners have, an organization can better understand how to consider all stakeholders in its product development, formulate a plan to cost-efficiently execute product development, and identify a path for gaining product market traction and retention by healthcare users.
A particular challenge is understanding the fragmented and regionalized healthcare software landscape and knowing how to integrate new software technology with legacy software at various healthcare entities, as documentation is rarely available. While it may seem expensive at first, a partnership can save money in the long run by enabling your organization’s healthcare IT products to be developed more quickly in a manner that is compatible with the rules and regulations of legacy software and the latest software.
Working with partners on your software’s go-to-market strategy can decrease the likelihood of product development failure, as they can advise you about the pitfalls that they have previously seen. When it comes to customer acquisition, partners can leverage their network and knowledge of various healthcare entities to bring the product to potential customers more quickly, reducing acquisition costs. Finally, partners can also help your organization address key needs to reduce product development costs by identifying the skills that software engineers should have in order to develop healthcare IT that organizations want to buy.
The healthcare software industry is large and complex, and software development for healthcare can be challenging for any organization. However, a partnership can help your organization overcome these challenges with appropriate GTM plan development, so you can bring your products to target customers faster. By leveraging the experience and knowledge of a good partner, you can minimize the headaches of product development, increase the likelihood of success for adaptation of your new healthcare IT, and help your organization become more profitable in the long term.
Here at OtterSoft, we help healthcare technology providers drive innovation and integrate smoothly with legacy systems to keep things in motion, address the challenges of healthcare innovation, and seamlessly sync information. To see how we can help you overcome the challenges of healthcare innovation, contact us today!