Digital health

Sell through security reviews and long cycles, and add AI features responsibly

We help digital health and health tech companies run the commercial side of an AI-enabled product: buyer research, security evidence, onboarding and customer outcomes. Product and clinical safety decisions stay with your team.

Short answer

How can AI help digital health companies?

AI helps a digital health company sell and support its product: drafting security questionnaire answers from an approved library, researching buying committees, answering onboarding questions and preparing renewal evidence. It can also make a product easier for customers' own agents to use through scoped connectors. Adding AI features to the product itself is a separate decision with its own safety and regulatory limits.

Who this covers

Organizations in this segment

  • Digital health startups and scaleups selling software to health systems and clinics
  • Platforms selling to payers and employers, such as care navigation
  • Remote monitoring, virtual care and patient engagement companies
  • Health data, interoperability and analytics vendors
  • Companies adding generative AI features to an existing product
Challenges

The business problems that hold this segment back

01

Buying is slow and spread across a committee

Clinical, operations, finance, IT security and compliance leaders each hold a veto, and intent is not deployment. NHS England reported 139 trusts live on its Federated Data Platform at the end of May 2026 against 170 signed up.

02

Every buyer sends a different security questionnaire

NHS-market products need a DTAC assessment, and organizations accessing NHS patient data complete the Data Security and Protection Toolkit yearly. US buyers want HIPAA evidence and business associate agreements. Stale answers slow deals.

03

Vendor adoption is not provider purchasing

McKinsey's late-2025 survey of 150 US leaders found health services and technology firms leading on generative AI implementation, with payers below 50%. That says nothing about how many providers will buy from you, and 36% of those firms' leaders said they build in-house.

04

Platforms are moving into your space

EHR and cloud vendors are adding assistants and agent builders, and several list partner-built apps in marketplaces. A listing is distribution, not evidence of clinical effectiveness.

05

Onboarding is where deals are lost after signature

Integration was the most-cited barrier to scaling in the same survey. Each customer's EHR and data feeds differ, so implementation can stall for reasons outside your product and still show up as churn.

Where AI fits

Suitable AI, and how mature each application is

Established means widely deployed and well documented. Emerging means real deployments exist but results vary with your data and workflow. Early means pilots or research, not a safe default.

Established

Security questionnaire and DTAC evidence drafting

A maintained library of approved answers lets AI draft responses with a source and last-reviewed date for each. The real risk is a stale answer, so ownership of the library matters more than the tool.

Emerging

Account and buying-committee research

AI summarizes public board papers, procurement notices and annual reports into a brief naming likely committee roles and concerns. It can misattribute roles, so the account executive verifies first.

Emerging

Onboarding assistant and implementation tracking

AI answers administrators' how-to questions from your documentation, tracks implementation tasks and drafts status updates, handing anything about patient data or incidents to a person.

Emerging

Renewal and outcome evidence

AI drafts a quarterly review from usage data and the customer's own measures, such as no-show rate or documentation time. The customer success manager checks every figure, because outcome claims must be traceable.

Emerging

Agent-ready product connectors

A scoped connector, such as an MCP server with limited permissions over FHIR resources, lets a customer's authorized assistant read specific data. MCP is established, but healthcare use is emerging, and no connector should expose a whole record by default.

Early

Agent-to-agent coordination

The A2A protocol proposes a way for independently operated agents to coordinate. We found no verified routine clinical workflows using it across EHRs, and it does not replace patient authorization. Worth prototyping, not worth a roadmap.

What stays human

Responsibilities that stay with your people

Founder or CEO

Owns the narrative and decides which claims about outcomes, security and AI reach buyers and investors.

Security and privacy lead

Signs off every security answer and decides what data may enter any AI tool, supported by AI governance work.

Clinical safety and regulatory lead

Decides whether a new AI feature is a device function and owns the safety case for NHS customers.

Account executives and sales lead

Own the champion relationships and the deal. AI prepares them but does not choose the approach.

Customer success manager

Owns outcome reporting, tells customers what the data shows and escalates incidents.

Improvements

Operational changes you can expect to work on

01

Shorter security reviews

Sourced draft answers and a ready evidence pack reduce back-and-forth, visible in review cycle time per deal.

02

Smoother handover to go-live

Onboarding checklists and tracked tasks cut surprises between signature and first use, visible in time to first value.

03

Pilots that end in a decision

Pilots start with agreed measures, a sponsor and a decision date, and revenue operations stages show pilot-to-contract conversion.

04

Renewal evidence that stands up

Quarterly reviews use traceable usage and customer-reported figures, giving renewal and investor talks firmer ground.

Commercial value

An honest story for buyers and investors

Health tech is crowded, and buyers and investors both look for proof that customers use the product and get something from it. AI adds discipline: knowing which accounts are real, answering reviews quickly, getting customers live and showing outcomes with sources. It does not replace a product that solves a problem buyers will pay to fix. Our GTM strategy work starts there.

  • Reach each committee role with a message written for its concern
  • Answer security reviews fast enough that they stop being the reason a deal stalls
  • Turn pilots into contracts with agreed measures and a decision date
  • Give investors a pipeline and retention view built from CRM data you trust
Rules and limits

US and UK rules that apply, and what is not ready yet

General information for planning, not legal advice. Statuses and dates are as published at the time of writing.

United States

  • HIPAA: existing Privacy and Security Rule duties apply now, including business associate agreements where you handle PHI for a covered entity. The January 2025 Security Rule proposal is unfinalized, so treat any 2027 target as a plan rather than a deadline.
  • FTC Health Breach Notification Rule: apps and platforms outside HIPAA can be covered. The amended rule took effect 29 July 2024, and the FTC's withdrawal of a 2021 policy statement on 9 September 2026 did not repeal it.
  • FDA clinical decision support guidance (final 6 January 2026, reissued 29 January 2026): an AI feature in your product is assessed function by function, and patient- or caregiver-facing functions can still be devices.

United Kingdom

  • DTAC: existing NHS assurance criteria covering clinical safety, data protection, technical security, interoperability, usability and accessibility. A DTAC assessment does not confer MHRA approval.
  • DCB0129 and DCB0160: mandatory NHS clinical risk management standards, not new AI laws. DCB0129 applies to health IT manufacturers and DCB0160 to deploying organizations.
  • Data Security and Protection Toolkit: annual assurance for organizations accessing NHS patient data or systems. The 2025/26 submission deadline was 30 June 2026.
  • NHS England's self-certified supplier registry for ambient voice technology (launched January 2026) is not NHS endorsement. Do not market a listing as one.
Not mature or not suitable yet
  • Agents that take clinical or irreversible actions without a person approving. Read-only retrieval and drafted orders for clinician review are what vendors report, and independent validation of write-back is thin.
  • FHIR or TEFCA as a promise of complete data. Not every TEFCA connection offers the same FHIR operations or a full longitudinal chart.
  • Wellness wording used to sidestep the device question. MHRA guidance says classification depends on purpose and risk, and in the US a patient-facing recommendation is not automatically exempt.
Where to start

Where we would begin

  1. 01

    Build the answer library

    We gather your past security, privacy and DTAC responses into one reviewed library with named owners, then use AI automation to draft from it with sources attached.

  2. 02

    Rebuild the pilot-to-contract path

    We define stages, success measures, a sponsor and a decision date for every pilot, and make the CRM show where pilots stall.

  3. 03

    Review one AI feature decision

    Before building, we run a function-level review: what the feature does, who sees the output, whether FDA or MHRA boundaries apply and what safety evidence buyers will ask for.

Questions

Frequently asked questions

How can we speed up security reviews?

Keep a maintained library of approved answers with owners and review dates, and draft from it. A person must still confirm each answer is current before it goes to a buyer.

Do we need DTAC to sell to the NHS?

NHS-market digital health products need a DTAC assessment. It does not confer MHRA approval, and a product that is a medical device follows a separate route. DCB0129 and DCB0160 also apply.

Does vendor AI adoption mean providers will buy more?

No. McKinsey found health services and technology firms leading on implementation, which describes vendors adopting AI. It does not measure provider purchasing, so qualify demand with real pilots and committee access.

Should we add generative AI features to our product?

Only where a specific workflow and measure justify it, and after a function-level regulatory review. We help with discovery and evaluation design; a regulated device needs specialists and a quality system.

Can you help founders with investor and board updates?

Yes. Trained executive assistants working with AI can draft updates from your CRM and finance data, and you review every figure. See AI executive assistance for how access and confidentiality are handled.

Make the next buyer review shorter than the last

Book a discovery call and bring your last security questionnaire, a live pilot or an AI feature you are weighing, and we will agree where to start. Or send a first note through the contact page.

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