I have been thinking about what it is that I provide to the people I work with and I came up with the term ‘clinical business development’. It seems to me that clinical business development is the process of determining the clinical applicability of a product or service, how it fits within the health system, how it meets the population health needs, and consequently how it can be developed to meet those needs.
As an organisation with an idea for a new health product or service how do you know whether this product actually solves a real problem? This can be a real challenge. Is there someone who can think about the way the product would fit in to a clinical pathway or answer a health need? Do they also know whether the identified problem really is a problem, and whether the solution actually solves the problem, or whether it pushes it further downstream? Do they know how to find this out?
In the UK a product or service may be required to fit in to the NHS system. Accessing the NHS can be tricky, but there are several routes, and the opportunities are increasing. It is no longer the case that the only route in is via NHS procurement pathways or CCG commissioners, and these certainly aren’t the necessarily the best way for innovative digital services. Could you get taken up by as PCN as part of a social prescribing process? Or would having your app assessed by Orcha and added to their health app library be the best way of reaching your target market? Research projects can be used to gain initial traction in the health system, uptake of a free service is understandably higher than commissioning a paid for service, but may not translate into ongoing use of the service once the evidence base is established. It may even open the door for other providers. Nor does getting your service or part of your service taken up in one part of the system mean that it can scale, even within the same organisation. You may decide that the NHS is not your route to market. The corporate or insurance market may provide a better opportunity to establish evidence on the quality and effectiveness of your offer.
I believe that patients should be more empowered to manage their own health and many of the services coming to market can work to this end. If something meets an individual’s needs does that mean that it makes sense from a commercial perspective? Unfortunately, the answer to this is of course not. In order for a business to be successful it needs to have enough scale to be viable, so thinking about your product from a population health perspective is important. There needs to be a buyer or investor who will pay enough to cover the costs of development, and this requires there to be enough interest in the product. A service that can meet multiple needs or be applied in variety of settings or conditions is appealing but has the potential to risk increasing the time and hence cost of development, and even missing important aspects of the clinical need.
Is clinical business development something we need more of? I would love to hear your thoughts.