The value of any product or service greatly depends on the eye of the beholder. One core question every innovator must ask, starting from the inception of a project, is “value to whom?” To make a persuasive case for new ideas, innovators must understand what their various stakeholders need. And in their Master of Health Care Innovation course, Value and Quality in Health Care, Drs. Neha Patel and Lee Fleisher address exactly that.

In this short interview, Dr. Fleisher offers insights that can help innovators think systematically about how to articulate the value of their ideas to garner not just notional buy-in, but sustained investment and funding. Drawing on his experience as a mentor, consultant, and former Chief Medical Officer and Director of the Center for Clinical Standards and Quality at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, he suggests strategies to help innovators strike a balance between storytelling and data as they prepare to pitch.

From the start of a project, he says, innovators must consider two questions separately:

1. Who will want the product or service?
2. Who will pay for it?

If the answer to the first question is patients and advocacy organizations, the balance of persuasion tips toward storytelling—drawing emotional connections to the innovation’s potential to improve lives, experiences, and health outcomes. A product that will block out loud NICU noises for neonates, for example, is an easy sell to parents because it speaks to their heart.

For clinicians and clinician leaders, storytelling remains important, but innovators must be prepared to back their claims with data. Dr. Fleisher suggests a short, compelling story as a pathway into the numbers.

To persuade entities to pay for an innovation, the primary emphasis must be data.

• Insurers want to know that an intervention has strong evidence—that it is not experimental. And they want to know that it will reduce the total cost of care.
• Decision makers in health systems want to know that the innovation will make their workforce more efficient. But more than that, they want to know that the investment will pay for itself in the form of improved patient outcomes and a stronger bottom line.
• Investors want to know, in addition to evidence of the effectiveness of a new product or service, that there is a clear path to commercialization.

The point that Drs. Fleisher and Patel make is that regardless of audience, stronger data is better. And while a randomized controlled trial may not always be realistic due to time and resources, innovators must recognize that rigorous collection and analysis of relevant data is essential to help them make their case.

Learn more about how you can position your innovations for success by taking Value and Quality in Health Care. And find out how the MHCI can equip you to drive innovation with both data and heart.