What Healthcare Taught Me About Trust, Timing and Selling

Healthcare is one of the most rewarding markets in which to build a business. It is also one of the easiest places to underestimate how long things take and how many people need to believe in what you are doing.

My experience covers healthcare from several angles. I led sourcing strategy and labour intelligence across EMEA and other international markets for UnitedHealth Group. I later co-founded SPRYT and helped take a healthcare technology company through NHS engagement, US market entry, strategic partnerships, fundraising and the realities of selling innovation into complex health systems.

The first lesson is simple: healthcare does not buy technology because it is clever. It buys outcomes it can trust.

A product may use excellent AI, beautiful design and technology that is years ahead of the existing system. The buyer still needs to understand whether it improves access, reduces administrative pressure, supports staff, protects patients, integrates safely and delivers measurable value. Innovation gets attention. Evidence gets decisions.

The second lesson is that the customer is rarely one person. A clinical leader may recognise the patient benefit. An operational leader may care about capacity and workflow. IT will need to understand security and integration. Procurement will examine risk and value. Finance will ask what changes economically. A commercial strategy must speak credibly to all of them without turning the message into a bowl of corporate soup.

Timing matters too. Healthcare sales cycles can be long because the consequences of a poor decision are real. That does not mean accepting endless conversations with no next step. It means understanding the decision process, identifying the genuine champion, building the evidence required and being clear about what must happen next.

My role is to help healthcare startups bridge the gap between innovation and adoption. I can help sharpen the commercial proposition, identify the right health systems and partners, prepare for buyer conversations, navigate complex stakeholder groups and build a route into Ireland, the UK or the US.

I also understand the founder’s frustration. Healthcare organisations regularly talk about transformation while making it incredibly difficult for new companies to get through the door. You need patience, but you also need persistence, relationships and a proposition connected to a problem the buyer already needs to solve.

There is enormous opportunity in healthcare, particularly for companies reducing friction for patients and pressure on staff. But there are no useful shortcuts. Trust has to be earned. Evidence has to be built. Implementation has to work in the real world.

That is the difference between having impressive healthcare technology and building a healthcare business that can scale.