Vision to Victory - Ignite Your AI Health Startups for Success!

Join Irene on SaugaTalks as she dives into the world of AI health startups with expert Jens Stengaard Jacobsen. In this insightful episode, recorded in June 2025, they explore the current state of health tech, critical mistakes to avoid, and strategies for scaling innovative solutions in healthcare. From finding the right pain points to building trust and securing social proof, Jens shares actionable insights for founders and innovators. Plus, hear an inspiring success story about a cancer patient app making a real impact!

Timestamps:

00:00–02:00: Introduction and the focus on AI health startups.

02:01–04:30: The state of health tech in 2025: prioritizing revenue, impact, and higher investment standards.

04:31–07:00: Navigating the AI bubble, risks, rewards, and the need for vertical focus in healthcare.

07:01–10:30: Identifying pain points, avoiding "solutions seeking problems," and understanding healthcare workflows.

10:31–14:00: Inside healthcare organizations: engaging professionals, the role of pilots, and building social proof.

14:01–17:30: Common pitfalls for AI startups, including workflow misalignment and overly ambitious claims.

17:31–20:00: The value of medical professionals and patients in co-creation and advisory roles.

20:01–24:00: Success story: A cancer patient app for young people, from co-creation to nationwide implementation in Denmark.

24:01–27:00: Scaling in large healthcare organizations: leveraging pilots, ambassadors, and business cases.

27:01–29:30: Key takeaways on building trust in healthcare and closing remarks.


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Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Hello, hello. This is Irene with Soga Talks. Hello. Thank you very much for joining us. If you're listening to us on LinkedIn, if you're on major podcasting platforms, on YouTube, on X, okay, please show us some support, all right? Please like, share with your networks, with your peers, with everybody, because I speak with fascinating people in tech, and we discuss topics all the way from tech trends to go-to-market strategies to partnerships a lot, a lot of interesting angles all the way from big enterprise AI solutions to advisors to startups. And today I'm very privileged because Jens Stensgaard Jacobson with me. Jens, how are you?

SPEAKER_01: 0:45

Doing great. Thank you. And thank you for having me in the CyberTalks today.

SPEAKER_00: 0:49

Absolutely, absolutely. I love the topic of our discussion because guess what, okay? Everywhere I go, I do hear about healthcare innovations. I talk a lot about AI solutions in health tech, in healthcare overall worldwide, okay? In the US, you know, it's a huge industry, huge investments, you know, big risks, big rewards, okay? That's why it's so wonderful to speak with you because you have an experience. in go-to-market, in partnership, in technology adoption. And I just want to see where do you think we stand right now in 2025, June it is, right? So where do you see the industry is right now? Couple of points that, you know, grabbing your

SPEAKER_01: 1:36

attention. Yeah, well, as you say, there is and there's been a lot of hype about health tech and digital health. I think we're in a period now where um people are rethinking their priorities and saying hey we we need revenue actual revenue we need uh actual impact and seeing that these tools actually work so the bar is getting higher for what it takes to get investments and to succeed in the market i'd say so it's a period of reconciliation i'd say

SPEAKER_00: 2:12

long time overdue because many were talking about ai bubble the new bubble that was just still forming in our eyes right and how risky or how rewarding it is right to make the investment in ai solutions and of course startups huge part of innovation ecosystem, right? So with your experience, could you please share what the successes or, again, disasters you see out there? It's a very broad question, but I just want to focus on your point of view, your experiences. Please enlighten us.

SPEAKER_01: 2:44

Yeah, well, as you say, with AI entering into healthcare and being a large part of many solutions that are coming out right now, The solutions that I see really work are really those that are able to find like a vertical, not the broad ones that you could use for everything. I mean, I think most of us are able to use ChatGPT for very, very broad, but if you're going into, and you need to be able to sell AI and succeed with AI and within healthcare, you need to go like vertically, master one area very deeply, uh and and get a foothold there because it just takes a long time with the validation that's needed in healthcare and the trust that you need to build there so yeah where i see what was needed to succeed is really to get to get in in into a specific quite narrow problem you solve uh with your with your tech and start there you can always expand from there um but but um But I see that tendency in what works and what kind of doesn't work.

SPEAKER_00: 3:59

You know, it's the toughest, it's the toughest angle, right? To any solution, to large company solution, to really to start up innovative pilot even, right? To find that pain point and really create a solution for the pain point, not, you know, like solution that's looking for a problem. You see what I mean? Yeah. Could you please elaborate?

SPEAKER_01: 4:22

Yes. I mean, that's often where founders start, that is having a great solution looking for a problem. And that makes sense. I mean, a lot of startups come out of great innovation environments that are tech-based and solutions appear. But at some point, some as early as possible going back and say okay how what are the problems out there the target group that we're probably going to see are going to use this how how is their everyday life how does that look like how does it look like to be a healthcare professional um consulting prescribing treatments um caring for patients what's the how does the everyday life look like there? What's important? What's at stake? What are the economic incentives, the systemic incentives and so on? What thousands of problems these people will have, which one are we going to solve that can be solved with our solution? Where do we have that match? And that actually takes more field work and more going out and talking to people than most people are comfortable with and have the, I mean, that they can wait to find that now we're really scaling, but can stay in that process long enough to really meet a problem. And that's often investors are looking to get their return on investment faster than what's possible within healthcare, I think. The upside is larger because it's a big problem we're solving, but I think being patient, I'm hoping and praying for more patients in healthcare because it does take longer time, but the upside is also larger.

SPEAKER_00: 6:35

Absolutely. What kind of conversations are happening? Okay, so let's enlighten the audience, you know, the founders, all the innovators, right? Those who don't necessarily have day-to-day contacts, okay? We know how many solutions being invented in the lab, so to speak, you mentioned, right, with technology being a driver, meaning that, hey, let's apply this, you know, to that particular industry, to that particular problem that we think exists, okay? So at the same time, what kind of conversation happening on the receiving side in healthcare organizations, okay, in those big provider groups, okay, when they selecting the vendor, when they thinking, where do we need to put our well, you know, earned money into, right, what workflows we have to change within our organizations, how that works?

SPEAKER_01: 7:28

so i'd like to separate that group into two because there are people within the healthcare organizations hospitals insurance and so on that are dealing specifically with this a few people that are sort of scouting finding out how to collaborate how do we innovate and so on and then there's a much larger group that are just normal healthcare professionals or a professor in something or at the ward level that have the problems and can be amazing ambassadors. And I think for that group, they're not sort of going out there and looking for solutions, but they're often quite open if you approach them in the right way. uh will often be the the first point of contact coming into the healthcare system um so um what i see is that a lot of people are successful in connecting with these health just just kind of ordinary um healthcare professionals that might be interested in um having digital health health tech as part of their career path, that's something they're interested in, the upcoming. But connecting with these, developing the solutions on sort of the hospital floor can be maybe the only possible and also quite impactful way to do it because that could be access to those that buy the solutions at some point. But they want to see clinicians using it before, right? They want to see pilots. They want to see proof that it's valuable before they go and buy solutions. And the discussions they're having at the hospital floor, that's resources. They're really spread thin with their time and the money at hospitals right now. And it's only getting worse. More and more people have more diseases and are getting older and so on. And there are less and less nurses and doctors to treat them. So for them, it's all the time discussing, okay, will this solve enough for me to... uh for to well they're also thinking return on investment right um they are so stretched on on time that if they spend time on implementing something um they might stress out their department uh because they're it's it's really up here so on the other side when you're creating a great health tech solution you need to be super aware of this that that you're you're selling to people that just don't have time. And you need to, before you improve quality, you need to save time because all changes take some kind of effort to make, even though they're great changes, but for them, it's saving time or money before improving quality, unfortunately. But all the time, the time they spend with your product and implementing that, they could have spent that with a patient, right? And so it makes sense. So yeah, these are the discussions. They're weighing in on how much time do we need to use to implement this. They're also discussing, do others do this? I mean, social proof within healthcare is just like any other industry. Like, I mean, they're looking to other healthcare professionals. Have they done this? almost it should have been invented at my hospital, but that's best. And with my mentor or the people that I'm looking to. So building social proof is extremely important in that business.

SPEAKER_00: 11:44

True. And in part, it's connected to fear of missing out. There is this term, right? Exactly. Because if my competitor,

SPEAKER_01: 11:53

right?

SPEAKER_00: 11:54

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01: 11:55

yeah it can switch into that and that's great if you can ignite that um the the FOMO because um but but there's also a big fear of um uh being a fool that you ran with something that wasn't validated that that um didn't have the impact uh so so the yeah the fomo and and and and the fear of of being a fool i think they're they're competing there um in in the minds of the people that are going to to implement it and and pull it in to the departments.

SPEAKER_00: 12:29

Fascinating. Some fascinating dynamics, okay, that make the innovation and the whole world, you know, moving forward. So can you point to some of the, like, clear mistakes, okay, that maybe these excited AI founders, AI startup founders, okay, or any technology founders, like, what are they making on what they don't know entering that complex landscape of conflicting at the same time igniting possibilities?

SPEAKER_01: 12:59

So I would say two things. I think the main thing is to go in and find that you have a great solution that doesn't have a place in the workflow of the healthcare professionals or the patients you're trying to help. So you need to really map how does the workflow of the healthcare professional that was going to use your tool, how does that look like? Or how does the everyday life of the patient that is going to be helped by whatever tool you have? You need to know that quite well, both before going to market, but also afterwards, because it'll change because of your tool. You need to know that and you need to know exactly what existing workflow you're fitting into and how you're changing that and making the habits around using your tool easy to do because us people, i i just very prone to go into habits and it's some something of the most difficult to change and it's something of the most valuable that we that we have it's continuous doing something that's where we get uh really can make an impact right so we wanna wanna tap into existing uh habits and we wanna um know what uh quote unquote bad habits that we are uh changing and be very mindful about that and i think a lot of tech entrepreneurs going into health are not enough aware about that. And the habits connected to our health are just very, very close and can be intimate. And the workflows and the habits that are part of healthcare professionals workflows are very habitual. And it's really on the spine that you just need to get a lot of stuff done. So Yeah, moving in that, be very aware about the habits already there, how you tap into it, how your intervention is going to change that and what comes out of it. Super, super key. The other thing, which is, I think, a bit more specific to healthcare is the whole, what claims are you making? And I think it's important in the beginning not to be too bold about what claims you're making about the amazing change you can do within a specific field. And the reason for that is that within healthcare, you may need to validate your claims. If it has an impact on people's health, on the decisions about treatment and so on, you may need a CE mark or FDA approval, depending on your continent where you're in the world. And that will take clinical studies. And the larger the claim, the more demanding clinical studies you need to make and the more time it will take for you to go to market. So you're actually risking going out, having a big claim that it will take you a couple of years actually to be able to validate that. And you might have a competitor with a smaller claim that can just swoop into the market. And afterwards have a lot of real world evidence for the solution just by being the market and then can can sort of take over your position so it's or you run out of investor money and so on, because it just takes takes time so being mindful about that claim and how that hits the. the habit and the change you wanna make, just super, super key. You make it too small, no one will use it. You make it too large, it's just gonna take too long. So finding that balance is not easy, but it's a mistake a lot of people make to sort of assume that it needs to be high or assuming that that is lower than it should be.

SPEAKER_00: 17:18

Did you find helpful to have part of startup, if not founders, but at least very closely connected to idea, to the solution, the highly esteemed medical professional or part of the innovative company? Because I know a lot of engineers, I know a lot of founders, not every startup has has this expertise under their belt, do you find it helpful or it's rather not significant factor?

SPEAKER_01: 17:49

That's very dependent on, again, the claim you're trying to make or the change you're making. What we've seen is that partnering with so within healthcare, you have like Kings and Queens within different areas and you have the top clinical experts. I've seen that they're not always the best to partner with because they just don't have the time to be part of innovation because they're sort of writing the guidelines for treatment. I mean, they have so much going on for them. It's rather the upcoming healthcare professionals that that are curious about tech that want to create a name and need to sort of do that in a way that the more established key opinion leaders have done. So what I've seen can work really well is partnering up with those that are up and coming within an area, get them as part of your advisory board, perhaps, I mean, being fully on the team is not always the best solution because then they also can lose the connection to clinical practice. If it's possible, then of course, it's a great resource to have because they know the habits, the workflows, the problems, the pressure of their colleagues, but it can easily be done as an advisory role. or or partnering in different ways collaborating on making pilots and so on to to to get them close because the the knowledge is is is super key i'd also say um keeping patient experts um like any other area having an illness you you can be at a noob level and you can be at a almost professional level and the patient organizations are often where you can um You can find people that have a broader understanding of how it is to live with a disease. And having these people close can give a lot to know about how will your digital solution actually pan out when it's out there in the world. So they can also be important experts. We've had a lot of success with putting them together in co-creation groups, just hearing their discussions. It's a great dynamic having healthcare professionals and patients in the same group because it's just different dialogues when they collaborate about something digital or tech. it's super helpful to letting them guide and their their discussions guide the development that can be very powerful um and super important ambassadors when you need to to do the implementation right

SPEAKER_00: 21:06

sure could you maybe uh share some successes okay uh without specifics but some projects that were done right hopefully avoiding mistakes you were talking about what the kind of yeah right yeah great inspiring story anything you could yeah

SPEAKER_01: 21:23

yeah i mean so uh there is a project and it's um uh within uh well within cancer, an app and patient reported outcome measure app for young people with cancer that we actually started with a talk with a professor at a hospital, just at a conference out of, hey, we need to do something here. Can we help each other out? And what was interesting there that the first round of funding for that was actually going to the pharmaceutical industry and say hey there's an interesting um a project here could you all put in a bit to get it started and get the co-creation um getting the the idea the initial ideation going for how how can we we help this group um and and and and what we did there was was to to gather a group of young people uh living with with cancer that were already at the same hospital, took them out of the hospital setting and worked with ideation about how could this look like. And from there, created a concept and found initial or found further funding from, that was actually from the insurance foundations. Taking it from there, getting validation, I think they wrote about 10 different articles about the impact of the health of the app on the health of um of the the users so documenting the the effect um and and getting through all these i mean there's a lot of um barriers when it comes to implementation when you're implementing an app service at a hospital i mean there's compliance it's just super super important so and that took about half or one year just getting through the the legal compliance things but on the other side of that we went on a fast track uh for um for implementation um and uh and and and got a reimbursement agreement for like a five-year reimbursement of agreement rolling out to all um hospitals in in in denmark all cancer departments so it's now solution that all young people living with cancer can access and they have a community where they can um uh can exchange um how it is and get help uh support each other and and there's also some tracking modules there to to to help so it's not it's not like um that's not a very advanced solution i mean it's it's a community it's tracking it's a lot of great knowledge uh great video a lot of great content but it's not like super super high tech but it was implementable and it was um it was possible to go to these stages and then you can work from there of course and then then there's a lot of things going on on on how to improve them there but you have a foothold in there um so i think there are a few learnings from that that that is you know the the crowdfunding where the you find different areas, arrays of funding. There's a whole co-creation going very closely to the people that are going to use it and the implementation. I mean, people from the inside of the system pulling it towards them made a huge difference there. And starting relatively simple, solving a problem, young people with cancer how do they how can they connect to each other how can we even though you're far away on the countryside not close to a university hospital how can you still access the connection that you need with other people going through the same crisis that it is to to have a cancer diagnosis that that's a fairly quote unquote simple problem. But solving that can really be a bridge towards being implementing and being used and working from there. I'd say that's a huge success story.

SPEAKER_00: 25:51

could you please share once kind of the door is half open, okay, in large organization? So for the startup, for smaller, younger organization, not by age, by just experience and energetic, you know, new innovators, how do you scale within each organization? Because we know large hospital groups, large healthcare organizations, they're multi-tiers, multi-hierarchical, right, structures, okay? So what's your advice in terms of... Once you kind of have your contacts and maybe first success already. Okay? What kind of thinking needs to happen at that stage? How do you build from there? I

SPEAKER_01: 26:32

think it's back to the social proof point again that you need to get that pilot. And sometimes we call it pilotitis as a disease. That's just pilot, pilot, pilot. But you need to get that. And it's not... only to prove the impact of your tool is also to get the ambassadors on the inside because at some point where you're going up in the hierarchies they will always be looking to towards are there something someone on on the floor that can benefit from this and if there's not there's just no case to be be made even though the economy is there but they also know that if it's not being used, if it doesn't add immediate value, it's not going to be implemented. So they will be looking at, will there be a group of physicians and patients benefiting from this from the get-go? On the other side of that, there's the business case. So like any other big organizations, whenever you spend money or time, whatever resources you have, there needs to be a business case. So you need someone on the team who's able to build a business case that resonates with the hospital management or whatever payer there is here. And there, it really taps into how do you save time? How do you save maybe treatments? Can you delay how early people need the very expensive treatments that we see in the healthcare system? How can we argue there? And unfortunately, just higher quality is not really an argument. I mean, you need to save money and you need to save time. And yeah, that's what I've seen resonate well when going up to the sort of really the buyers and decision makers at hospitals and health organizations, insurance companies and so on.

UNKNOWN: 28:44

Bye.

SPEAKER_00: 28:47

Time is flying, you know, we're only scratching the surface. It's a huge opportunity, huge industry, right? Huge opportunities at the same time, a lot of pitfalls, right? That everyone who works there know and they get beaten up badly, okay? Before the first success, right? But at the same time, you get that precious, precious wisdom that doesn't come from books. It doesn't come from classes. It's really when you're out there, right? Trying and yeah, this feel of that success I can only imagine how rewarding and how fabulous it is. In summary, in conclusion of this conversation, could you please share a few takeaways? Because we have technology professionals, we have business professionals in healthcare and outside of healthcare listening to us. Could you please leave our audience with a few takeaways?

SPEAKER_01: 29:43

I think my key insight that i've gained is really that you know scaling in healthcare just it happens at the speed of trust i mean building uh credibility in the more slow sense um it's just needed and and there are different ways to do that and it's very dependent on on whatever you you're in but building that trust about that you can can deliver on your claims you um you're worth the time investment and so on i think that's the maybe all other uh if industries trust is also really key but it's just more so in in healthcare and has a huge impact on the uh development history of of companies that that you need to build that you need to have the time and resources and focus to to build trust around what you're doing.

SPEAKER_00: 30:42

Perfect. Perfect. Thank you, Jan, so very much for your time. Thank you for sharing the insights and wisdom with us. Thank you. Thank you for having me, Irene. Take care.