Most of us dream of healthtech consultants that are truly plug and play, take a look at the business and almost as if waving a magic wand, they orchestrate hockey stick growth like it was out of a clear blue sky.
Kinda like the Top Gun academy in the movies: the best of the best. The uncommon men among uncommon men. Goose and Tom Cruise.
The reality, however, is often painfully different. The Top Gun of healthtech consultants tend to be hard to find, and they don’t come cheap.
There are plenty of freelance platforms out there, and especially, those highly vetted and intended for coders or graphics work have become popular. But for marketing, growth or industry-specific help, they don’t seem to be able to seriously compete with one’s own network and referrals in terms of volume.
Generic freelance sites like Upwork, do have a few options simply because of their size. In preparation for this article, I’ve looked around many different websites to find examples of contractors that you might be interested in if you’ve already exhausted your network, and are stuck without any meaningful referrals you wanna move forward with (or if you are simply looking for alternatives to get a lay of the landscape).
Before we go any further, I should mention that I haven’t been paid to put anyone on this list and I haven’t worked with any of them previously, although I could see why some might jump to that conclusion.
6 Healthtech consultants you can contact today
I’ve been scouring all over the internet as it isn’t exactly easy to find independent industry consultants. I’ve found a few across a number of freelance platforms and independent players but most of the ones I come across are agencies that appear to be more focused on traditional hospitals and clinics rather than VC-backed tech startups.
Sometimes they work specifically across certain disciplines or topics like patient acquisition, marketing or data security. Other times, they can help look into the future and point out traps, problems, and solutions before they even happen. I’ve come across several problems that experienced consultants can help healthtech startups with specifically:
- Patient acquisition
- No-show rates
- Managing cost and utilization of physicians during care fulfillment
- Managing day-to-day operations at clinics
- Organize data and extract business insights
- Preventing data breaches
Anyway, let’s dive into the list.
I went on Upwork to get some consultant samples for you but I was only able to find a few consultants specializing in health tech. Most mentioned the industry alongside a wide range of other industries they work in as well.
Here’s a list of those few that I did find:
This consultant displays a different name than mentioned in the bio, so I’m not sure what that’s all about but they appear to specialize in healthcare and healthtech. Here’s how he can help as described by his bio:
“Mark provides consulting services to help healthcare services and technologies companies improve the quality of their care programs services, and products. He conducts complete business analytics to identify areas that impact quality and operational excellence. He also advises startups on product, market strategy, ways of integrating emerging technologies and innovative problem-solving methods to assure strategic success.”
Santosh is another consultant, with expertise described as:
“-Leader in healthcare innovation practices with expertise in healthcare data strategy, outcome-oriented program design and management with proven track record of excellent program delivery
-Demonstrated success in healthcare research project management and clinical data strategy – clinical data strategy and operations incl data source mapping, review, analysis and reporting, project and portfolio management, clinical trial operations management.”
A third option is Razmig, describing himself and his background as:
“The most stimulating part of a job is solving difficult challenges. Whether I am managing operations or a project, I view each challenge as an opportunity to transform the organization I serve. I do this by leveraging my ongoing education, work experience, and an array of soft, transformational skills. Known for producing quality deliverables and stakeholder satisfaction by understanding the expectations of excellent care, key quality measures, and the power of effective teamwork.”
Another is Drea, who describes her recent projects as:
“My recent projects include behavioral design, civ-tech/smart cities, artificial intelligence and machine learning, cybersecurity, near-infrared spectroscopy, functional MRI, stem-cells/tissue-engineering, vascular composite allograft, 3D printing, virtual reality, blockchain, specialist networks, nanotechnology, voice-recognition software, microbiome sequencing, web/app product design, business strategy, startup strategy, social enterprise, popular science writing, branding/PR and niche marketing. In global health, I develop high-tech for low-resource environments.”
Silvia describes her background as:
“Educated at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, I am a biotechnologist with over 15 years of professional experience in different divisions in the pharmaceutical industry (marketing & commercial & R&D&i & Digital) in managerial positions within high-performance teams in the pharmaceutical industry (Novartis, Ipsen Pharma, Thea, Lundbeck, J&J).Highly focused on performance excellence, she creates and develops value-innovative projects involving healthcare and healthtech. In the entrepreneurship field, she has been jury member of a healthtech startups contest, mentored SMEs and startups.”
Finally, we have Himanshu who is a software developer and consultant specializing in the industry. He describes his expertise as:
“With 14+ years of experience in technology, the majority of the work done is in healthcare – both clinical care and virtual care.
Healthcare IT expertise –
- Electronic Medical Record (EMR) and Electronic Health Record (EHR) System
- Practice Management Software
- DI-COM Viewer, PACS
- Healthcare Interoperability (HL7, CCDA)
- E-prescription
- Telemedicine
- Billing and Insurance
- Health Kit Integration
- Home Care | Aged Care | Assisted Day Care Living Platform
- Certifications – MU and MACRA”
If you’d like to take a look for yourself beyond a google search, you might be interested in looking at these sites:
- Toptal
- Upwork
- Freelancer.com
- Hubstaff Talent
- Fiverr
Why hire a healthtech consultant?
We all know the saying that time is money.
That is especially true for venture capital backed tech startups since as soon as they raise money, they are on a schedule to use it as planned, grow and raise another round again.
There are many things that can put a stop to that. One is changing market conditions, and another is spending that precious energy and money on the wrong projects. Projects that contribute too little or worse, nothing at all. With a preplanned schedule and runway, time becomes a lot more expensive than we are normally used to.
That means if we can find a consultant who can truly help us solve certain problems it tends to be more affordable than it looks as the alternative of going down the wrong path pursuing an irrelevant project for months (if not years) is much more expensive.
It’s kinda like reading a good book, even one good insight can be worth the money and make a huge impact.
Takeaways
- Specialized industry consultants are surprisingly challenging to find online – most are agencies
- Hiring a good consultant tends to be more affordable than going through trial and error as they can help speed up the learning curve and solve the problems faster based on their experience having already solved the same problem for a similar organization
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