Catherine Davies is managing partner of Monticle, which was created to help health tech firms to grow their revenues, make the right connections within the NHS and identify the best NHS organisations to partner with. Here, she offers Health Tech World readers her insights on how to turn an NHS contact into a potential partner.
You spend months playing Diary Tetris as your NHS contacts have to reschedule discussions because of urgent operational challenges, go on annual leave, move jobs, and direct you to a new point of contact. Then you finally get it – the coveted accepted call invite.
Although that can seem like the hard bit is finally over, if you don’t have the answers to some key questions – the relationship will often fizzle once you end the call as follow-up emails go unanswered.
So many of the health tech companies I speak to are pros at explaining how their technology works, but struggle to communicate effectively with the NHS.
We’ve set out some commonly asked questions below, taken from recent conversations with NHS contacts, to help you prep for introductory conversations.
Well thought through answers to these questions will help you establish a good rapport and start building a mutually beneficial relationship.
What big problem are you helping to solve?
Really get to grips with the big problem in the NHS your technology helps solve and understand the sorts of solutions that people in the NHS are looking for.
These solutions sought might be less exciting than you expect. An NHS commissioner we spoke to recently talked about the challenges of communication across NHS organisations and of helping patients understand care pathways involving multiple providers.
She talked about the desire for fewer touch points or interactions between points of care. She also mentioned that staffing is their biggest challenge and there are inefficiencies in how things work today – job planning is still very manual and variable for example.
Can you integrate rather than add?
Think about whether your tech can integrate with what is already being used – NHS Trust innovation teams don’t want to give time-pressed clinicians another system to have to learn and log on to.
If you can’t integrate yet, be prepared to explain how you’ve made things easy – eg a copy/paste function from your system into an existing electronic patient record system – and offer support every step of the way in the set up.
Catherine Davies
What low value activity does your technology take away?
It’s great if there is something NHS staff are doing currently that they don’t need to be doing and you can help with that. Excessive admin can often be removed by smart tech solutions and there is a real appetite for doing this.
What do you want from the partnership?
Think about the nature of the partnership you’re looking for.
Do you want to offer a pilot first, demonstrate the solution’s value and then tailor an agreement? Or can you replicate something you have done already and go straight to commercial terms.
When discussing financials, we advise clients to avoid saying ‘it depends…’ when asked how much it costs. It’s helpful to have a specific offer and a financial range in mind so you can be clear up front.
Are clinicians interested in what you have to offer?
It sounds like a simple one but ask yourself who has been the most interested in your technology.
Is it operational teams or clinical teams? Is your point of interest also the point of need and point of authority?
If not, ask the question and help your contact have those conversations where you can. Generally the more engaged clinical teams are throughout this process, the easier things will be.
What challenges have you faced rolling out your technology?
Every company, partnership and roll-out has its challenges. Reflect on some of the difficulties you’ve faced with your current use cases, even if they aren’t in the NHS, and be prepared to show how you are now prepared to mitigate potential hurdles.
Avoid saying you’ve had no challenges – we all know things rarely fall perfectly into place. It’s communicating how we learn from them to prevent them happening again that can add reassurance in these initial conversations.
Takeaways
The NHS needs ideas, innovations and technologies, but it’s not enough to rely on that need alone. Innovators have to do their homework so that when you click on that MS Teams link, you’re able to articulate the mutual benefit of any potential partnership, not just explain your tech.
Prior to setting up Monticle, Catherine Davies held executive level roles within Monitor and its predecessor body and worked for a high performing NHS Foundation Trust. She has overseen many NHS acute trust mergers, run investigations into purchasing decisions and carried out NHS market studies. She is a member of the Health Tech World Thought Leadership Panel. Follow her updates here.
