MedTech is a strange world.
Engineers build things. Investors fund them. Regulators approve them. And then they get released into the world where sick people are supposed to use them, except often they can't. Or won't. Because nobody built them with actual patients in mind.
I've watched this pattern repeat a thousand times. A startup builds a diagnostic tool. It's elegant. It works. But it assumes a patient who can sit upright for five minutes without their heart rate spiking. A patient who has the cognitive bandwidth to complete a questionnaire. A patient whose main problem is the one the tool was designed to solve.
Which patient is that? Not many.
The ones I talk to are people managing multiple conditions, managing energy scarcity, managing systems that don't work. Their actual needs are different from the theoretical patient.
What would change if MedTech companies systematically included patients in design?
Everything.
You'd end up with tools that work with one hand. Tools that don't require constant connectivity. Tools that understand that a patient's biggest problem might not be what the tool measures — it might be managing symptoms well enough to keep showing up for their kid's school pickup.
But that requires something the tech world hasn't quite figured out: patience with non-linear needs. It requires holding two truths at once. That the clinical problem is real. And the patient's context is real. And you have to solve for both.
I built Bedcoders around this principle. Code education for people who are horizontal, exhausted, or both. Not because I'm generous. Because the alternative — standard code education — doesn't work for us. So I designed the alternative.
That's the work that needs to happen in MedTech. Not charity. Design. Real design. With patients inside it from day one.
The companies doing this are winning. Not because they're morally superior. Because they're actually solving problems that matter.
Listen to the full conversation: We need more patient voices in MedTech on Chronically.