Laurence Girard’s Tips for Building Digital Health Products

Digital health products have tremendous potential to have a social impact and positively improve the health of the public. I personally built a digital diabetes prevention program that helps people lose weight to reduce their risk for type 2 diabetes. I often get asked by physicians for advice on how they should build their digital health products and so I decided to write this article to share some advice:

Tip #1 — Design First, Code Later

Many first time digital health entrepreneurs think they need to hire expensive software engineers to start writing code when they come up with their idea. It’s actually better to start out by creating clickable wire frames that don’t require you to write any code. This is a lower cost option that allows you to create the design for your product and then show it to actual users before you start writing code. After the first draft of your design, you can show your product to actual users and then go through a few iterations of the design process. This will help you finalize a design before passing it off to your engineering team.

Tip #2 — Digitize Existing Evidenced Based Program Programs

One strategy that I have used in my digital health career is to find existing evidence based programs that are delivered in-person and then determine if they can be delivered online via teleheath or a digital mechanism. For example, Medicare spent $175 million proving that group classes for diabetes prevention are effective at helping people reduce their risk for Type 2 diabetes. This led to research published in the New England Journal of Medicine. My company Fruit Street then decided to use Zoom to deliver group classes online instead of in-person. By using an existing evidence based program and digitizing it, you will have more scientific evidence behind what you are building.

Tip #3 — Consider Selling to Self-Insured Employers

Self-insured employers have a huge incentive to adopt digital health solutions because it can scale to their entire population and help them reduce their healthcare costs. Many first time digital health entrepreneurs make the mistake of thinking that marketing directly to the consumer makes the most sense. The problem with consumer marketing is that it’s expensive and the consumers may not be covered by insurance. By selling to a self-insured employer they can decide to cover your services under their health plan and help you market to their population.

This article was authored by Laurence Girard, the CEO and Founder of Fruit Street Health. Fruit Street delivers a suite of telemedicine services to self-insured employees and health plans including a CDC recognized diabetes prevention program. He has raised more than $25 million from more than 500 physicians for Fruit Street.