Strategy & Positioning
Strategy & Positioning
Strategy translates discovery insights into a clear product direction. For health products, strategy must balance user needs, clinical requirements, regulatory constraints, and business viability.
Product Vision
A strong product vision for health products answers:
- Who are you serving? (patients, clinicians, both?)
- What health outcome will you improve?
- How will you improve it? (intervention, monitoring, education, coordination?)
- Why are you uniquely positioned to solve this?
Value Proposition Canvas for Health
Adapt the standard value proposition canvas for healthcare:
Pains to relieve: Complexity of care, information fragmentation, anxiety, cost, travel to appointments
Gains to create: Better outcomes, convenience, peace of mind, continuity of care, data-driven insights
Competitive Positioning
Health tech positioning often falls into one of these categories:
- Clinical differentiator: Better outcomes, validated evidence
- Experience differentiator: Better UX than existing clinical tools
- Access differentiator: Reaching underserved populations
- Cost differentiator: Lower cost than alternatives
- Integration differentiator: Works with existing EHR/workflows
Outcome Definition
Define what success looks like:
- Clinical outcomes: HbA1c reduction, blood pressure control, readmission rates
- Engagement outcomes: DAU, retention, completion rates
- Business outcomes: Revenue, contracts, reimbursements
- User outcomes: Satisfaction (Net Promoter Score, SUS), task completion
Health-Specific Strategy Considerations
Will payers reimburse? What evidence do they need? What CPT codes apply?
B2C (direct to consumer), B2B (to health systems), or B2B2C (through employers/providers)?
What clearance/approval is needed? What timeline does that imply?
What evidence will you need to generate? When? How?
Related Chapters
- Discovery & Research — Inputs to strategy
- Business & Go-to-Market — Commercial strategy deep dive
- Pricing & Reimbursement — Revenue models