545 - Beyond the Prototype: The Hidden Work Behind HealthTech Commercialisation

In this episode of Talking HealthTech, Peter Birch speaks with Greg Rosenbauer, CEO and co-founder of Your Brain Health, and Lynette Reeves, Digital Health Lead at Miroma Project Factory (MPF), about the process of building digital health solutions.

The conversation explores challenges faced by founders, the importance of early-stage consultation before writing code, and the unique hurdles of commercialising research and scaling health technology products.

Key Takeaways

🔍 Building digital health products should not start with coding. Early focus needs to be on understanding the problem, the end users, and identifying who will actually pay for the solution.

🧠 Validation through stakeholder engagement, workflow mapping, and customer experience analysis is essential before moving into technology development.

✍️ Health technology projects require consideration of compliance, regulation, integration with electronic health records (EHR/EMR), and can rarely be solved in a single development cycle.

📃 Many innovations stem from clinicians or researchers dealing with fragmented or inefficient processes, often starting as paper-based or spreadsheet solutions before evolving into scalable platforms.

👩‍🏫 The commercialisation journey is especially complex for academic researchers, as there can be a significant gap between evidence generation and market readiness. Consultancy and grant support are key enablers.

🏥 Accelerators, grants, and support organisations like ANDHealth and Cicada Innovations are available in Australia to help bridge the “messy middle” between research and commercialisation, but the process remains competitive and challenging.

💻 Co-design with diverse clients and iterative development enable digital health solutions to remain flexible and relevant as user needs and market opportunities evolve.

Check out the episode and full show notes on the Talking HealthTech website.

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THT+ Digital Health Career Toolkit

Explore the free THT+ Digital Health Career Toolkit, a five-day email series to help you clarify where you fit in digital health and take your next step: talkinghealth.tech/toolkit.

THT+ Digital Health Career Toolkit

Explore the free THT+ Digital Health Career Toolkit, a five-day email series to help you clarify where you fit in digital health and take your next step: talkinghealth.tech/toolkit.