The Hidden Breakpoints in HealthTech Product Management
- Mary McKee
- Apr 28
- 3 min read
Everyone wants to build the future of healthcare. Few know how to survive the middle.
We talk about healthcare's digital transformation like it's inevitable. Virtual-first care. AI-driven diagnosis. Personalized medicine. But between idea and impact lies an unforgiving terrain: the operational, regulatory, and product challenges that crush even the best-intentioned startups.
HealthTech isn't just about product-market fit. It's about product-market-trust.
In a regulated, high-stakes environment, the usual rules of startup speed break down. You can't "move fast and break things" when lives, data privacy, and reimbursements are on the line. HealthTech leaders face a different mandate: move fast, build right, and scale trust.
That's why building HealthTech products requires a fundamentally different product management framework - one that sees around corners, integrates compliance into design, and treats cross-functional alignment as the product itself.
Here’s how we do it at Coordination Health.
The Framework
1. Discovery and Context Building: See the Full Terrain
Before you write a single requirement, you need a map.
Stakeholder Mapping: Identify everyone who matters: patients, providers, payers, regulators, and your internal teams.
Challenge Identification: Surface the invisible blockers - the compliance landmines, operational bottlenecks, and workflow misalignments others miss.
Market Context: Understand your competitive set, regulatory obligations, and where your product fits into the real world.
Risk Scanning: Compliance is not a checkbox. It's an accelerant if you bake it in from Day 1.
Output: A Discovery Report that becomes your north star.
2. Strategic Alignment: Win Cross-Functional Buy-In Early
Most HealthTech products don't fail because of tech debt. They fail because of misalignment.
Product-Market Fit Assessment: Validate that the "problem" you are solving is worth solving - and solvable.
Cross-Functional Sessions: Marketing, Sales, Clinical, Engineering, Compliance - everyone in one room, aligned on what success looks like.
Prioritization: Ruthless focus, guided by a matrix that weighs clinical impact, compliance risk, technical feasibility, and commercial viability.
Output: A Strategic Product Charter and an executable 90-180 day plan.
3. Designing for Execution and Scale: Build to Last (and Launch)
The best HealthTech products anticipate operational scale from the beginning.
MVP Definition: Minimum viable… and compliant. A product that can clear internal risk committees, payers, and user trust thresholds.
Clinical Workflow Design: If your solution doesn't fit into a provider's day, it won't matter how "disruptive" it is.
AI/Automation Guardrails: For AI products, define auditability, explainability, and bias mitigation requirements upfront.
Integration Readiness: Build like you're going to plug into Epic, Cerner, payers, and devices — because you will.
Output: Product Requirements Document + Risk and Compliance Addendum.
4. Go-to-Market Activation: Product Isn't Launched Until It's Adopted
A "launch" is not a press release. It's a coordinated operational effort.
GTM Alignment: Engineering, Clinical, Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success — singing from the same playbook.
Launch Readiness Audit: Operational, compliance, and support systems fully stress-tested before Day 1.
Customer Proof Points: Early pilots aren't vanity metrics — they're the foundation of your sales story.
Output: Launch Playbook + Success Metrics Dashboard.
5. Iteration and Growth Acceleration: Scale Trust as You Scale Revenue
Launch is just the beginning.
Customer Feedback Loops: Build VOC (Voice of Customer) programs into your operations.
Compliance Maintenance: What was compliant at launch may not be compliant in 12 months. Build for continuous assurance.
Growth Mapping: Identify the next logical product expansions based on real-world data, not gut feel.
Output: A Quarterly Product Growth Plan.
Principles that Anchor the Framework
Move fast, but don’t break trust.
Regulatory excellence is a competitive advantage, not a burden.
Customer feedback is your real boardroom.
Cross-functional is the only functional.
Build products that integrate into life, not add steps to it.
Why this matters now
HealthTech is at an inflection point. AI models are improving clinical decision-making. Digital-first providers are reshaping access to care. New infrastructure is emerging to support it all.
But no technology succeeds without trust. And trust is productized through operational rigor, regulatory fluency, and clinical empathy baked directly into how you build.
At Coordination Health, we don't just consult. We co-pilot. We work side-by-side with HealthTech executives to build products — and companies — that earn trust at scale.
Because in healthcare, it's not enough to build. You have to build right.