From Idea to Adoption: The Fast Track for Healthcare Innovators
A 10-Point Checklist for Success
By Paul Alper, BA, LCC
Over the past 30 years, I’ve had the privilege of working at the intersection of healthcare innovation, patient safety, and strategic growth. From launching widely adopted solutions like PURELL® into the healthcare and consumer markets to inventing hand hygiene monitoring technology that helped reduce infections and costs to helping expand and grow the Partners Advisory Committee of The Leapfrog Group, I’ve worked alongside some of the most respected names in infection prevention and control, safety culture, and performance improvement.
Today, through Next Level Strategies and our newly formed alliance with IPC Launch Founder and CEO Dr. Ericka Kalp, I’m focused on helping healthcare innovators turn promising technologies, products and services designed to reduce infections, enhance patient safety or improve quality outcomes into successful, scalable solutions that hospitals, health systems, and providers across the care continuum adopt, scale, and use system wide.
Through this work, I’ve seen patterns emerge—what separates successful innovators from those who stall or struggle. Whether you’re a startup with momentum or an established company facing resource constraints, these 10 actions are essential for accelerating adoption and delivering measurable impact. Your chances of success are diminished if any key action is missing or weak.
10 Must-Do Actions for Accelerated Growth in Healthcare Innovation
1. Identify the problem or challenge you’re solving
Be specific and grounded in a real, validated healthcare challenge that users really want to solve AND are willing to expend scarce resources to do so. It is essential that all on your leadership team and customer-facing staff fully understand why this is a problem worthy of solving.
2. Pinpoint the pain points (aka what keeps them up at night?) that the problem or challenge causes for your target customer
Understand how it impacts patient outcomes, staff workflow, and/or cost. If you are unsure, deploy some quick market research to gather user insights! The better you understand why this keeps your customer up at night, the stronger your case for adoption will be.
3. Bundle your evidence
Make sure your solution is supported by credible clinical evidence bundles and aligned with current standards of care—even better if you are creating a new standard of care! And don’t wait for peer-reviewed studies that may be in the works, curate posters and abstracts from early adopters, and submit them for acceptance at appropriate conferences such as those of: The Leapfrog Group, the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC) both at the national as well as regional chapter level as well, the Society for Healthcare Epidemiologists of America (SHEA), The Infectious Diseases Society of America’s (IDSA) ID Week as is appropriate. Seek podium opportunities whenever possible.
4. Have your ROI story ready
Demonstrate return on investment in clear, authentic, and quantifiable terms—ideally with a case study or even better, published data. Create a customized tool that uses prospective customer input to help establish credibility. The more engaging and customized your tool, the more believable it is to economic decision makers.
5. Know your audience
Identify the stakeholders involved in the decision-making process—both clinical advocates and economic decision makers. Nothing is more frustrating than gaining a passionate advocate on the clinical side only to learn they do not control the requisite budget to support adoption. Engage your early adopter advocates for connections to anyone in the organization who might have influence over the adoption and decision process, such as Value Analysis Committees.
6. Align with the right influencers
Build relationships with key opinion leaders (KOLs) and academic researchers, and respected influential organizations. These include the previously mentioned Leapfrog Group, APIC, SHEA, and IDSA, among others. You want as many independent third parties behind you as possible. Plus, their insights are of exceptional value. Consider creating and managing an independent advisory board/council of SMEs and thought leaders.
7. Ensure regulatory readiness
Understand and meet the regulatory and compliance requirements (on national and regional levels) specific to your product and target markets. Ensure that all instructions for use (IFUs) are clear and aligned with appropriate regulations.
8. Establish scalable implementation protocols
Your solution should be easy to implement, train on, and integrate into existing workflows with minimal disruption. Follow implementation science best practices. The easier it is for staff to adopt, implement, and measure success, the faster you will scale and expand.
9. Define success through mutually agreed upon metrics
Collaborate with end users to create a mutually agreed-upon dashboard or key performance indicators that measure implementation success and support expansion of use and sustained adoption. It is essential that performance expectations are matched and aligned. Nothing is worse than a customer thinking they will achieve 3X improvement when only 2X is reasonable and achievable.
10. Leverage real-world testimonials
Collect and curate testimonials from satisfied users—and, with their permission, allow prospective customers to connect with them directly for candid input and feedback. Nothing says more than a satisfied customer who can articulate their successful experience with your innovation. Two or three-minute testimonial videos can make some of the most compelling arguments for adoption.
Driving the adoption of innovations in healthcare is hard and, by its nature, takes time—but it’s possible to accelerate success when you focus on what really matters.
Paul Alper is President, Founder, and CEO of Next Level Strategies, LLC, a growth acceleration advisory practice. He is a Senior Advisor to the Leapfrog Group, and most recently formed an alliance with Dr. Ericka Kalp of IPC Launch to provide a full suite of services to drive growth acceleration with solid clinical evidence for healthcare innovators.