Case study · Vivify Health
The hospital couldn’t justify buying it. So the patients used it first.
A HealthTech SaaS and remote patient monitoring company wanted to increase commercialization effectiveness with short-term acute care hospitals after being acquired by Optum. Hospitals were interested — they just couldn’t find a way to adopt it without damaging their margins.
The outcome
Patients began using Vivify Health’s RPM technology outside the hospital setting, which built trust with clinical teams. Those clinicians then became internal advocates, positioning themselves to influence and petition their hospitals to adopt Vivify’s RPM services.
The challenge
This HealthTech SaaS and remote patient monitoring company wanted to increase their commercialization effectiveness with short-term acute care hospitals after they were acquired by Optum, Inc. (a division of UnitedHealth Group). The challenge was figuring out how to capture a portion of a market that was over $3.6 billion in total addressable market in 2021–2022.
Honeywell, Philips, AccuHealth, American Telecare, HRS and Vitls held 70% of the U.S. market share in the remote patient monitoring sector.
How to differentiate Vivify Health in the market and capture double-digit market share in an entrenched market, where hospitals are regularly using other products and services from those companies? Price alone isn’t a strategic way to differentiate enough.
The Bridge Audit™ discovery
After multiple meetings with executive leadership, mid-level management and sales directors to review the commercialization strategy for the defined target market, a key barrier emerged: while hospitals expressed interest in the SaaS platform, they were unable to identify a financially viable way to adopt it without negatively impacting their margins.
Compounding this challenge, competing solutions were often bundled with existing products already in use, making it difficult for Vivify to gain traction within the hospital environment.
What ultimately became clear was the need to expand beyond the traditional hospital channel. This led to a strategic shift toward UnitedHealthcare’s insured patient population, ACOs, large physician group practices, and organizations such as US Renal Care and US Oncology.
The solution
Through auditing the commercialization process, it became clear that the traditional approach to introducing the hardware and software as a service was generating minimal year-over-year growth. In contrast, the expanded target market created unconventional pathways to gain access to hospitals and acute care organizations.
The value of the service became increasingly evident. By integrating remote patient monitoring into the daily management of high-acuity patients, healthcare treatment organizations were able to reduce unnecessary costs associated with specific disease states, driven in part by fewer emergency department visits.
Rather than competing directly with entrenched solutions inside hospital systems, this approach effectively bypassed the traditional entry point.
Why it worked
When uncommon and creative commercialization strategies and tactics are used, it benefits more than just the company itself.
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