Pilots and Beyond: Build HealthTech for a Complex World
From promising pilot to sustainable revenue—navigating the treacherous gap that kills most healthcare innovations
The NUS Medicine Digital Advanced Technology Accelerator (DATA) convened healthcare technology founders and investors to dissect a critical challenge: most healthcare pilots never convert to commercial contracts. The panel explored why promising technologies struggle to transition from validation to revenue, and the strategic approaches that separate successful scale-ups from perpetual pilot programmes.
The Commercialisation Challenge
Healthcare technology commercialisation requires navigating complex organisational structures where clinical champions, procurement teams, and IT departments each hold veto power. A fundamental challenge lies in buyer-user divergence: hospital administrators making purchasing decisions often prioritise different factors than the clinicians actually using the technology.
Success demands systematic de-risking strategies, converting pilot results into compelling business cases, and identifying internal champions who can navigate competing priorities. Credibility emerges through rigorous evidence generation—clinical outcomes, operational efficiency gains, and cost-benefit analyses that speak the language of hospital procurement committees, not just enthusiastic pilot users.
Panel Speakers
Keirn O’Connor
HealthTech investor and advisor with extensive commercialisation experience.
Debleena Ray, PhD
Founder and DATA alumna navigating clinical adoption challenges.
Zacchaeus Chok
Founder and DATA alumnus scaling healthcare technology solutions.
Shavit N. Clein
HealthTech entrepreneur with track record in commercial deployment.
Moderated by Aristotle Ang, NUS Medicine DATA
The discussion provided actionable frameworks for converting pilots into sustainable partnerships—addressing the systematic barriers that prevent healthcare innovation adoption despite clinical validation.
Other Related News
