Healthtech / digital health pilots

Providers, payers, and life-sciences buyers will hand you a sandbox EHR tenant, an innovation-committee slot, and a "let's explore" thread without much thought. None of that makes a pilot. A convertible pilot has a named site, specialty, or workflow, a compelling event, written criteria clinicians and finance can underwrite, and a path to a PO or MSA if the proof lands.

Keep design-partner co-development, IRB research, and unpaid co-builds separate from customer pilots. Co-dev and IRB work can build evidence later, and they seldom close deals this quarter. If one SOW mixes unpaid research with a paid commercial path, name which clock you are on.

Hunt for compelling events: an EHR module go-live, a quality-measure or reporting deadline, a staffing crisis, a spike in prior-auth burden, a site or specialty expansion, a payer contract change, or a board mandate on documentation, denials, or throughput.

Health buyers expect security work to start up front. In the first week of serious interest, start HIPAA / BAA, SOC2 / HITRUST (or equivalent), the vendor-risk questionnaire, EHR / integration review, privacy legal, and the security questionnaire. Run them before or in parallel with the clinical pilot so you aren't starting after clinicians have already said they like it.

Write down the committee. The clinical champion (often the CMO, CMIO, a specialty lead, or nursing informatics) is not the economic buyer. The check-writer is often the CFO, COO, CIO, or procurement with a budget line. Clinical enthusiasm without finance and IT clearance dies after the proof.

Work backwards from your target ACV and the MSA / GPO process. If production requires a BAA, a master agreement, or a credentialing packet, start them while the pilot runs instead of after the demo tour.

Write criteria a CMO and a CFO can both sign, and instrument them inside the pilot window on a bounded scope (one site, one specialty, one workflow): turnaround time, read rates, documentation time, denial rate, throughput, prior-auth cycle time, or staffing hours saved.

"NPS went up" and "clinicians seem happier" won't pass as success criteria. Price the pilot when you can, and put the phase-two commercial terms (sites, specialties, ACV intent, MSA / BAA path) in writing so the pilot can't turn into permanent unpaid co-development.

Land a quick win in weeks 1–2 that clinical leadership and finance can see without living in the UI. A one-page memo with one underwritable metric beats another product tour.

Hold a formal midpoint against the written scorecard. Adjust only against the criteria, and don't expand to a second specialty or site without saying so.

Keep the BAA, HIPAA / security, EHR integration, legal, and procurement moving each week. Healthtech pilots miss the EHR go-live, quality deadline, or fiscal close when the team finds BAA or interface gaps in the final week.

Restate the criteria, the evidence, and the commercial path from the agreement, then ask for the PO or MSA schedule. "Clinicians loved it" without a signature is a stall.

If budget or risk appetite wobbles, cut to one site, one specialty, or one workflow. Don't teach procurement that a successful clinical pilot earns a list-price haircut.

Name the healthtech stall mode before you improvise.

Treat the pilot scope (one site, one specialty, one workflow) as a proof sample. Expand from the phase-two price and the MSA / BAA terms in the agreement.

Add sites, specialties, or service lines after production is live. A published win (with permission) helps you sell the next facility. If you keep "pilot pricing" going inside a health system, each expansion starts at a discount.

Use this as a pattern drill. It is not a claimed case study, and the numbers are illustrative.

Use the Healthtech pilot scorecard template for the blank worksheet, a filled example, the HIPAA / BAA / security parallel-path checklist, and a copy-ready AI prompt.