Companies creating health care applications, digital fitness solutions, and other health-related software compete fiercely for technical staff. An article by Developers.Net cites various statistics suggesting that demand outstrips the supply of programmers by hundreds of thousands of people. Other disciplines (such as needed for data science and machine learning) are also hotly contested.
Anmol Madan, co-founder and CEO of RadiantGraph, says that tech experts might need to accept a pay cut to work for a small digital health company. Startups just can’t compete with major employers such as Google on salary and benefits.
But don’t we need to apply our best design, programming, and data science efforts to a field that disproportionately determines human happiness, and that consumes %20 of the U.S. economy? Stephen Dean—co-founder of Keona Health, which creates AI-based tools to relieve burdens from clinicians—points out that software and AI will be necessary to rescue the health care field, burdened as it is with burn-out, widespread staff retirements, and the morale-sapping pressures of documentation.
Dean points out, “There’s a lot of low-hanging fruit relative to other industries. Because health care lags in automation, patients find interactions with their doctor harder, longer, and filled with more barriers compared to banking, retail, and other services.”
At the same time, digital health companies seek a particularly committed developer who sees their mission as more than a chance to see their code come to life—rather, a chance to improve lives around the world.
So how do firms focused on health get their staff? This three-part series looks at how to find the dedicate employees you ideally want, and how to recruit and retain them. A few strategies seem to be held in common by these companies, but there are a few unusual ones as well.
Who Makes a Good Candidate for Health IT Development?
But first—whom do you want in your company? The rest of this article focuses on the type of developer who will thrive and contribute to the mission of a digital health company.
To Sandeep Shah, founder and CEO of Skyscape, the motivations of the job applicants are crucial. During the interview process, Skyscape looks for an interest that goes beyond the coding conventions and tools (although those are important, as we’ll see) to show concern for the company’s mission and the needs of its clients.
Skyscape wants someone who is not a lone cowboy or cowgirl, but will work well with the team and think holistically. In this, it’s like most businesses today. They also want someone willing to listen on channels where customers share problems, and to work on a problem at 10 PM if necessary. Shah says the tech staff they hire tend to stay longer than the normal cycle seen by most companies. The staff often have a relative in the medical field.
Shah had another interesting observation: he’s looking for someone eager to optimize and automate processes, what many people call the trait of “laziness.” Shah says that people who want to save a few seconds of their own time can also appreciate their users’ time. For clinicians in a busy clinic or hospital, every keystroke matters.
Jimmie Poeng, director of solutions at Dedalus, writes in a similar vein, “Digital health companies should look for candidates who have strong communication skills and the ability to work independently as well as collaboratively.” Poeng also recommends that digital health companies look for software engineers familiar with compliance and data management, because the industry is focused on complex problems of data and data privacy.
Part of your argument to potential employees is that you’ll be effective—in other words, successful. Hundreds of promising companies are invented every year and fail because management didn’t understand the field they’re entering or truly address the pain points that patients, clinicians, and payers feel.
Dean thinks that small startups have a better chance of success than big companies from other industries that take note of the money being invested in health care and think they can pick up that field as just another vertical. We’ve seen lots of stumbles by Amazon, Microsoft, etc. They are usually unprepared for the regulatory complexity of health care, resistance and conservatism among customers, and other barriers.
In particular, observers have noted, health care is difficult because you need to satisfy many constituents simultaneously. The product must be engaging and show immediate value to patients, or they’ll refuse to use it. But the product is usually licensed and promoted by payers, so you have to make sure to meet their needs for cost savings, patient recruitment, and government reimbursements.
To succeed, Dean says, you really have to start out in the health care field and know it as an insider. He says that Keona Health was fortunate to find clients who could work closely to identify AI-related opportunities.
Patrick Schiess, President and Chief Information Security Officer at Darena Solutions, notes that software engineers are often tasked with product design and user experience roles, despite lacking adequate training or design backgrounds. He emphasizes that empathy is critical in crafting products that truly satisfy users; however, software engineers are frequently not provided sufficient time or resources to conduct the necessary research and testing inherent in the design process.
As a result, Schiess points out, products often turn out to be unintuitive or fail to align with user needs. This leads to a double setback: Software engineers feel overburdened by the design responsibilities they are ill-equipped for and become demoralized by negative feedback on products they develop.
He observes that few software development teams prioritize hiring professional experience designers. Yet there’s no substitute for engaging the right experts and dedicating time to essential steps such as conducting user interviews, building wireframes, and prototyping—all integral to effective design. Schiess concurs with other experts in advocating for the inclusion of business process specialists who deeply understand the specific problems to be addressed.
The next article in this series examines strategies used by firms in digital health to recruit software engineers.
