Healthcare AI Hiring Thoughts.

Ask anyone that's sold into healthcare. Healthcare is a different animal, a different game entirely especially on the enterprise side. Despite everything from complex regulations to limited budgets for innovations, even getting in the door these days is a monumental break through. The best healthcare reps understand this: you have to be able to tie everything back to the patient in order to have a truer meaningful conversations with end users of the product. Whether that's a solo practitioner, large clinic or hospital admins if you can't clearly articulate how your solutions is going impact care, you are dead in the water.

I've noticed that a number of start up ai companies have been prioritizing candidates with ai background over candidates that have been selling into healthcare verticals. Many seem to be going all-in on hiring folks who know their AI stuff, but maybe not so much about healthcare. It's like they're putting all their chips on AI expertise. Now, this might fly for smaller deals, you know, selling to your average doc or tiny clinic. But even then, it's kinda dicey. Why? Well, doctors aren't exactly jumping for joy at the whole "AI revolution" thing. They've been doing things their way for decades, and they're not super pumped about shaking things up just 'cause some tech bros say so. Doctors are the hardest demographic to sell to. You need to understand how they operate, paint the picture on how exactly your product is going affect the patient.

Challenges in the Healthcare Market

1. Physician Skepticism: Doctors are often wary of "transformative" language and resist disruptions to their long-established practices.
2. Healthcare Complexity: The healthcare industry is a unique and complex ecosystem with its own set of rules and nuances.
3. Conservative Hospital Culture: Hospitals tend to be traditional institutions with limited budgets, especially during economic downturns.
4. Evolving Payment Models: The industry constantly shifts between various fee models, including fee-for-service and value-based care, adding complexity to sales processes.

Recommendations

1. Balanced Hiring: Start integrating talent with medical SaaS experience now to build it into the company culture.
2. Trust Building: It's far easier to gain trust as a healthcare company offering AI solutions than as an AI company that happens to target the healthcare space.
3. Scalability: Consider the different challenges faced when moving from transactional deals to enterprise-level sales in healthcare.

Building trust comes easier with this crowd when you are a healthcare organization with an ai solution rather than an ai solution who just picked healthcare.

Credibility matters.