Triage

Innovating in the healthcare space

In the medical use, triage is the process to decide the order of treatment of patients or casualties. This is extremely hard and challenging, especially in cases of life-or-death treatments, however in a constrained environment this kind of decision making approach is essential to provide timely care to those that need it the most. And, at the end, to optimize care for the whole population.

Triaging is also inherently connected to the idea of innovation. Either at portfolio level, deciding which products or ideas prioritize and sponsor and which ones stop, or at product level, deciding which features build next, there is a clear need to define a process for decision making. Theory says that we need to look at the potential value and the cost - either money, time or cost of opportunity (what’s the cost of delaying a specific product feature). However doing that is not always straightforward. Specially when we deal with cutting-edge technologies that define a new product category, a new business models or when it involves a market on its infancy (such as health tech).

There are a vast amount of resources and literature talking about innovation and product management frameworks, however, moving from the book to the practice is hard. The fragmentation of the market, imperfect or limited data, scattered decision-making processes are some of common challenges that health tech innovators and product managers need to face every day. Triage is a newsletter aimed at better understand the complexities and nuances involved in the journey of building and delivering products and innovation in the healthcare space.

Welcome to Triage!