What do you do if physicians are resistant to collaborating with entrepreneurs in the healthcare industry?

Build trust through education. Educate physicians not just about the product or service, but about the entrepreneurial process itself. Demonstrate how innovation can coexist with patient safety and enhance the quality of care. Real-life case studies and evidence-based outcomes can be powerful here. In addition, instead of presenting a finished product, involve physicians in the development process. Their insights can be invaluable in shaping a solution that is not only innovative but also practical and user-friendly for healthcare professionals and their patients.

Physicians offer a perspective that only they can uniquely bring. They are keen to find value and alignment to their goals of delivering care that is meaningful. I believe we have to start by aligning goals and understanding each other’s perspectives. Data is also key. What is the evidence-based practice that is driving this change? Asking for physician to validate findings and empowering their voice to drive strategic change is critical in healthcare.

The statistics are astounding for technology startups, as 95% fail. The workflow, data requirements, cognitive processes, and scientific understanding of a physician is actually complex. Most technologies that have not been shaped from the beginning by a physician with some engineering and technologic underpinnings runs the risk of being irrelevant at worst and a modest value addition in most cases. My advice is to have a physician paid to help with development and the messaging once developed. Don't hire a physician just for lip service. The working physician is most often financially penalized for doing anything that is not clinically related, so don't be surprised when they don't want to offer their time.

Learn from the disastrous introduction of most health AI products. The developers need to observe the end-user's needs and workflow. Carefully document the pain points by observation rather than paper or e-queries. Nothing is worse than wasting a physician's time with a 40-minute telephone interview. If the product they want us to use is a nuisance or hindrance and takes up more time with no tangible benefit to the user, chances are the users will quickly figure out a workaround ( as we do with the enterprise EHRS). Avoid hard-sell. Help users try out your solution and be willing to accept rejection with an explanation. The keywords are "observe, listen, and then analyze"

Think of your target physician like a partner because that’s what they are. Just as you think of an angel investor like a finance partner and pitch them appropriately, you need the right pitch for the physician you want to work with. Some of them enjoy entrepreneurship and some don’t, but all will understand value to themselves or to their patients. Speak to that. Also, practice your elevator pitch with a doctor you trust. I’ve heard pitches from many non-clinical folks and I always have some constructive feedback that will help them with their next pitch. If you don’t know anyone you can practice with, then just make sure to ask for feedback after every pitch whether they buy in or not. As always, it’s a numbers game. Just keep trying!

Grabbing the busy healthcare professional’s attention is just as challenging. Finding the venues and the channels to communicate is just as important.

Change management is one of the most difficult and important aspects of deploying new technology for clinical staff to use - this is as true for nurses and PAs as it is for doctors. Communicating the value in a way that reduces possible resistance is key. Truly understanding the problem being addressed is a good first step, but it's just as important to ensure effective workflow integration to reduce unnecessary burden on the users. Care providers are already stretched thin, so learning something new is typically not a high priority until they can fully appreciate the benefits. Given the number of failed pilots and startups in the sector, there is good reason for users to be skeptical when something new is being pushed on them.

In my experience working with Physicians and Providers for a large complex organization, someone who can re-ignite their love for the work they do for patients, can bring immense value to not only their business to their life and well-being. This has to be a carefully crafted strategy, with the right person in place and collective force that sustains within the company.

These days I am hard pressed to see what value a “would be”entrepreneur could offer a physician who hates his or her job, is burned out, and is being forced to practice a form of medicine that he or she is not proud of.

Healthcare and specifically practicing medicine is heavily regulated industry and is also rooted in convention and traditions. One way to reduce resistance is to co produce value in collaboration with clinicians, through eliciting their inputs and give them the chance to challenge the assumption and co design the initial tests for the MVP. The other element to design the system in terms of policies to govern the interaction and decision making process

By involving physicians (and other clinicians) early in the process you can ensure their buy-in from an early stage, but more importantly, their input is incredibly valuable already at the mock-up/MVP stage. There are many ways you can get in touch with physicians who are eager to get involved. Make use of your network and get introductions, reach out cold on LinkedIn, or seek out physicians who are speaking about your topic online, in the news, or at conferences. Whenever you get a no or not now, ask them to put you in touch with anyone else in their network who might be happy to help. You usually only need one or two to get the ball rolling with more intros.

Use UX VISUALIZATIONS and give several different options. Not so much theoretical text. Click-mock UPS are more suitable to make your point.

Iteration and small improvements are key to ensure you're on the right course. Real-world data are essential to ensure your solution won't crash and burn when it hits the actual clinic or hospital room. Plenty of vendors develop their products with unrealistic, over-simplified data. These look great on the demo screen, but fall apart in clinical settings. Don't make this mistake!

It is most important that you are not blinded by your enthusiasm to collaborate and that the attempt to engage doesn’t become a burden to your audience’s available time and patience. It is a delicate balancing act.

The key to training physicians is to speak their language and understand their daily work. While this should be obvious, an understanding of adult learning techniques is essential. When it comes to technical training, remember to always train workflows and NEVER train functionality. No one wants to sit in a lecture and hear what every button on the screen does; NO ONE. What we want (and need) is to understand how to use the tool to achieve our goals: in the hospital, we may want to admit a patient or dictate our op note. How do we use your technology to do these things? That's how we need to learn your product.

I remember attending a physician training class at another hospital system. I was asked to go because that health system "did it right" in the view the technology vendor. The class went perfectly. Coffee, donuts, intros, explanations, demonstrations, exercises and plenty of breaks. No button went unexplained or untouched. At the end of the long day, one ED doc said, "I still don't know how all this "stuff" helps me care for the patient. If I don't know that, it's all a waste of time." That hit home. It's not about the clicks. It's about the care. Workflows not just work. Physicians don't view training as a waste of time. They just hate training that wastes their time.

I have been involved in business with physicians over the last 20 years. From the perspective of the hospital o, insurer, and or large healthcare system there always must be a Physician Executive involved. It is better if the physician executive has some entrepreneurial and or business experience. You have to help physicians if they are involved in private practice they are already entrepreneurs. If they are independent they are a business person. My experience as of recently if they can see themselves as inventors or creators of innovation they become interested in a revenue stream that could be created. Physicians have to accept they need entrepreneurs so they can expand their revenue they need to see them as allies

Encourage your future partners to delegate as much as possible to their support team. To get their buy in, as they are usually key to successful changes within a practice. Approaching change from a team perspective can help solidify processes sooner and enable both the physician and entrepreneur to work more seamlessly together. Being aware is their work flow will allow one to gain more enthusiasm and support from the physician. Offering them not all available tools but only the ones that work best for them is vital. Overwhelming them with too many options can lead to later failures and physician distress. No different than offering a newly diagnosed patient with too many resources at one time.

It is important to provide a well thought proposal plan with vision, policies, goals, responsibilities, and professionalism to maintain a healthy culture among all involved in the process. It is also important to provide the in-service on how training will start, time spent, equipment used, and educational material to review. Feedback will assure learning goals or continue discussions to improve ways in closing the gaps of learning or reducing resistance to change. First, we need to understand the plan, resources, budget, challenges, and how to keep patients safe while working alone. State and federal regulations must be followed as well as scope of practice. Lastly, an evaluation must be conducted to assess Ed was delivered.

Its very important to make a note of team work. For the success of any healthcare institute it's imperative that all members including the physician's feel a sense of belonging towards the institute. This has to be driven constantly by internal communication and networking. The physician needs to be felt as important as any other individual. Generally I have found that physician's are never involved in creating an annual budget plan or during any other important decisions. If we are able to create a sense of team work and ownership, I think one won't find any resistance from the physicians in implementing any of the growth plans for the institute.

1. You’re an entrepreneur, avoid the posture of knowing everything. You’re not invited here to show them how to do their job better. 2. If you’re an entrepreneur, bring value and not just another twist of the same old wheel. Is what you offer quality with value added. 3. if you are an entrepreneur and you are primarily outside of the healthcare network, then you need to prove your worth to those inside the healthcare network, and not DO what happened with the electronic record. Rammed with mandates into health care, inflexible, touting better delivery . Mostly Showing no respect for the physicians patient relationship. Performance declined patients developed anger. It appears that everyone is frustrated , both healer and patient.

Start with the WIIFM principle - what’s in it for me? Even the most altruistic professional is interested in this. Then, of particular interest to most physicians - what’s in it for patients? This can generate some deep passions in clinical care as well as healthcare management and administration. Just be careful that “patient interests” are not used as an excuse to open the doors wider to prioritized, self-centred interests.

There are still generational issues regarding how patient care is assessed, patient treatment is implemented and (especially) documented. Comprehensive screening tools are needed to identify these differences prior to change. Training and education cannot be pigeon holed or implemented with a cookie cutter approach.

Whenever you talk to a physician, talk in terms of patients I mean how the patient will benefit from your solutions Example: if you are selling a Hospital information system: tell them how your software would benefit the patient- eg.- your software has a feature of comparing all the reports in tabular format. Column headings - particulars, current report (April), 1 month before (March), 2 months before (Feb) So as you already know Doctor comparing would be easy for you and a pattern analysis would give better results. Another example: Integration with CRM tool & ultimate benefits to the patient etc. Communicate value to the patient and you'll get positive results