The future of health tech and why clinicians are the missing piece

Health tech is booming. Artificial intelligence (AI) is helping clinicians document notes, apps are delivering therapy, and hospital-at-home products are gaining traction. But you know what’s still missing from many of these companies?

Clinicians.

Not just as token advisors. But as builders, implementers, product owners, AI safety checks, and cross-functional glue. 

As a pharmacist who has been in the space for over 10 years now. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. And the problem is complicated. Certainly clinicians are doing clinical work at these companies, but they are often not valued outside of that clinical role. Instead of seeing that they are a treasure trove of insight, background, and ideas, they are often micromanaged to a fault resulting in burn out and mediocre patient care. 

Why clinicians are health tech’s most underrated asset

Healthcare technology companies have had their ups and downs over the past decade. The chart below from Rock Health shows this as measured by annual venture capital funding in the space, with a slow climb since 2014, a high peak in 2021 after the telehealth boom of 2020, and a more recent steady state in the past few years. 

You could say that there is now a bit more realism in the space. Is there money to be made? Sure. But deal sizes aren’t what they used to be and companies are expected more than ever to prove that they have a path to profitability in a space where the cash is controlled by a few huge players. 

In the early days, optimistic healthcare companies cropped up because healthcare’s problems abound and solving just a couple of them could unlock big wins for investors, patients, and the system at large. But many of these companies have failed along the way. Not because the algorithms are bad, but because without the right leadership at the helm, they’re far too often built in a vacuum—far from the nuance of real care.

You’ve probably heard these before:

• “We built an amazing tool… but we couldn’t get physicians to use it.”
  
• “We assumed the nurse would have time to open a second app during rounds.”
  

This happens when real users (real clinicians) weren’t brought into the development process early enough. Clinicians bring the kind of insight that can’t be Googled or crowdsourced. You’ve seen what actually happens between the chart and the patient. That frontline wisdom is the missing variable in too many digital health equations.

Where clinicians are already changing the game

This isn’t just a pitch. Across the industry, clinicians are taking on critical roles—not only designing tools, but making sure they actually work in the real world.

Let’s break it down with some real examples of how clinicians can add unique value in tech:

🤖AI human-in-the-loop

AI is everywhere from ambient scribes to diagnostic triage tools. But AI without human oversight? We’re certainly not ready for that in healthcare yet.

Clinicians are increasingly embedded into AI feedback loops to:

• Review AI-generated documentation for clinical accuracy (e.g., ambient scribe platforms like Nabla)
  
• Curate and label training data to teach models what good care actually looks like
  
• Flag clinical edge cases where automated tools could go wrong
  
• Serve on safety review panels that oversee new releases of AI features
  

These aren’t fluffy “reviewer” roles—they’re integral to how these tools improve over time.

🛠️ Implementation and change management

Digital transformation doesn’t stop at launch day. Clinicians are vital in implementation teams rolling out:

• Virtual-first care models at health systems (think onboarding providers to remote workflows)
  
• New EHR modules or third-party integrations that need thoughtful clinical workflows
  
• Remote monitoring platforms, where success hinges on buy-in from nursing and primary care
  
• Care coordination tools, which live or die based on how frontline staff actually use them
  

You’re not just a messenger here—you’re the translator, the optimizer, the person who can say, “This feature works on paper, but it breaks down at shift change.”

🧩 Product development

Clinicians are being hired as:

• Clinical Product Managers, co-owning features alongside engineers and designers
  
• Clinical Implementation Leads, working with customer success and IT teams
  
• UX Researchers, running interviews and user tests to capture real patient and provider experiences
  
• AI Ethicists or Safety Officers, ensuring tools align with clinical realities and regulatory frameworks
  

When clinicians take on roles like this, clinical knowledge is even more spread across the system, building strong foundations, trust, and ultimately improving clinical outcomes.

What this looks like in practice

• You’re a former RN helping implement a hospital-at-home platform. You run workflow pilots, gather feedback from floor nurses, and co-design escalation protocols for remote monitoring.
  
• You’re a physician assistant working with an ambient AI documentation company. You listen to real-world recordings, spot inaccuracies in generated notes, and train the model to handle nuance in SOAP documentation.
  
• You’re a clinical pharmacist embedded in a product team building a medication adherence tool. You ensure it integrates into prescribing workflows and doesn’t trigger alert fatigue.
  
• You’re a former physical therapist now working with a digital MSK startup. You test motion-sensing tech, provide clinical QA, and translate protocols into scalable content.
  

This isn’t just career reinvention, it’s system redesign from the inside out.

Big wins clinicians bring to tech

You don’t just reduce risk, you accelerate success:

• Speed up time-to-value by ensuring tools are actually usable 
• Improve patient outcomes by shaping evidence-based features
• Increase provider satisfaction by removing friction instead of adding it
• Reduce regulatory missteps by seeing things through a compliance lens from day one