5 Keys to Success for mHealth Entrepreneurs

I had the pleasure of attending HealthCamp Orlando 2012.  The event, a collaboration between HealthCamp Florida and Florida Medical Quality Assurance, Inc. (FMQAI) brought together mHealth entrepreneurs, researchers, marketers and software developers for a day of learning and sharing at Florida Hospital in Orlando. One of the interesting aspects of HealthCamp was its lack of a predetermined schedule, which allowed attendees and speakers to mix and match their activities based upon their interest level — a perfect set up for entrepreneurs.

Of the many notable speakers, my favorite of the day was Kurt Long, founder and CEO of FairWarning, Inc. FairWarning develops and markets privacy breach detection solutions for electronic health records (EHRs).  Long basically invented this category and built his company into the global leader in this area. Here are six tips from Kurt’s talk that mHealth entrepreneurs can use when building their new brands.

1. Deliver innovation and value to the market – Seems like a simple enough concept, right? But how many entrepreneurs do this versus building a better mousetrap?  Remember, nobody wants to hear your (lame) marketing pitch.
2. Innovation means delivering a product that delivers at least a 10x increase in productivity or value – According to Long, just delivering a 2 or 3x increase won’t cut it. It won’t separate you from all other products on the market.
3. Your solution must have a zero FTE (full time equivalent) impact to be successful. If your new mHealth product or service requires the customer to hire staff to implement, you’re dead in the water.
4. Healthcare is a close-knit community – Your customers travel in the same professional circles. They attend the same professional conferences.  Deliver a great customer experience and your customers will be your biggest fans. Fail at this and they won’t be shy letting peers know. Be aware of this when bringing your product to market.
5. Love your customers, one metro at a time – Success in healthcare is dependent on customer-to-customer references. You need your first customer to give you a reference. This can take up to 16 months. The best strategy is to target a specific market and use the first reference to leverage other health care facilities in the market. Remember tip #4.
6. Webinars are a key component to successful marketing.  The key to webinar success: get great speakers and let them do their thing.  Asking people to dedicate 50-60 minutes of their busy day on your webinar requires delivering worthwhile content from recognized experts. Keep the webinar focused on the content and not on marketing hype about your business.

This is the second HealthCamp event in Florida.  The organizers did a good job of bringing together an interesting mix of speakers and served the conference up on a useful app called “Guidebook” that allowed attendees to easily read session descriptions, find locations as well as share and rate each session.