“The primary value proposition of “Health-tech” entrepreneurs should be to offer a solution that can replace treatment processes and methods with ones that are less harmful to the patient.”
The classical essence of our approach to the patient in healthcare services is expressed by the saying “First, do no harm” (1). This saying is one of the main rules taught in our medical education and reminds us that we must first consider the possible harms that any medical intervention may cause. The modern ideology of entrepreneurship is “Move fast and break things”(2). These two philosophies are fundamentally opposed to each other. The trial-and-error method, which is a fundamental component of the innovation process in the medical industry, is never used in the field, and if used, it is inevitable that it will have serious medicolegal consequences. For this reason, healthcare professionals are reluctant to make changes—if a system or technology they are currently using to deliver healthcare appears to be working well enough. This attitude is more pronounced the closer the change in question is to the patient, who is the last link in the service chain. Since highly educated and experienced professionals work in the field of healthcare, it takes a very long time for entrepreneurs with disruptive ideas or innovations to impose these innovations on them and ensure their acceptance, compared to other sectors. By seeing themselves as a component of the medical care team—even though they never actually see the patient—digital technology and artificial intelligence entrepreneurs can absorb the fundamentals of this approach from healthcare professionals and understand how to adapt their value proposition to it. Possibly, these entrepreneurs have ideas that can replace some of the treatment processes and methods that have historically harmed patients with less harmful ones, and these ideas can increase the healing abilities of healthcare personnel. This is where the primary value proposition of health-tech entrepreneurs should occur: Treating patients with the least harm. Providing a solution that will contribute! This value proposition is the individual-centered perspective mentioned in the first part of this article series (3).
(1) Although the exact source of this saying, whose origin is “primum non nocere” in Latin, is unknown, it is often attributed to the corpus Hippocratum.
(2) The exact version of this quote as said by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg: “If you’re not breaking things, you’re probably not moving fast enough.” The basis for this slogan is Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen (b. 1952, d. 2020). It is based on their view of what is known as “disruptive innovation”.
(3) See Part I: Why is there a need for artificial intelligence in healthcare?
