As part of its ongoing partnership with Business Cloud, Refresh is supporting this year’s HealthTech50, joining the judging panel. Below we share the things we’ve been looking for from companies on the longlist.
Every single organisation on the longlist is doing amazing things. The reality of healthtech is you are changing lives in some way. The booming sector is improving health outcomes for patients, reducing costs for healthcare providers, and supporting the NHS transformation from a cure-centric approach to a prevention-led one.
As the name suggests, the first thing we were looking for was great use of tech. But tech, on its own, has limited use if patients can’t experience it properly. We were also looking, for things like how easy was it to use, how committed was the organisation to co-designing with its end users, and how much did the innovation promote system-wide integration.
Specifically, our criteria looked like this (in no particular order!)
- The end user: there is so much talk about community engagement and co-product in health and social care, much of it just pays lip service to an essential part of service design and delivery. We wanted to see companies that took time to not just understand their end users, but to feel their problems, and, where possible, bring them into the co-design process
- Unique: there is so much happening in the health and care system. Top-down, billion-pound commissioners share a field with agile start-ups. Was a company on the long-list doing something totally new? Something that others aren’t, can’t, or won’t
- Marginalised communities: If there is one thing technology cannot do it’s increase health inequalities. Healthtech has a real opportunity to dismantle structural inequalities and standarise access to, and quality of, care. We were looking for companies that targeted historically marginalised communities who have struggled to receive the care they need
- Social Determinants of Health: How and where we live affects our health, even if it doesn’t appear to have a direct clinical link. Appreciating the role the social determinants of health, such as safe housing, consistent social connections, and good work, was also something we were looking out for
- Accessible: Perhaps the greatest advantage technology brings us is its agility. We can bring services direct to patients when and where they need it. How easy is the tech to use? Could our Nan use it, or do we need to go to MIT?
- The Bigger Picture: Two big things need to happen in healthcare in the next five years. More money, and decentralisation. But if local and regional bodies do become more autonomous, then integration becomes the challenge. How does the product support this need?
It can be easy to get lost in the power of healthtech, but, as a leader in the space, guiding your product to tick some of the aforementioned boxes will not only make it easier for you to navigate the complex health and care landscape, but it’ll make your product more desirable, too.
The final list will be being released shortly, and it will be accompanied with an Insights report as well as a dedicated roundtable later in the year. There’s so much happening in this space, we’d encourage you all to keep up to date with our work at Refresh.