A winning
strategy
at last

January 16, 2024 --

How do you sell a nursing app? How do you sell two of them?

Yes, I have developed two -- NurseAssess and NurseMind -- each more brilliant than the last. Workflow-centric... reality-based... developed by nurses for nurses... making nursing better... or should. Alas, the marketplace hasn't cooperated.

In my first approach, I expected nurses far and wide to use and love my apps and subscribe for just four bucks a month. Alas, this approach was a flop; on the Internet, everything is free. Even just four bucks scared people off.

My second approach I termed "come from below". I expected nurses everywhere to enthusiastically adopt my apps and use them on the job. This would get management's attention and lead to sales. Though many nurses did indeed use the apps, they needed to be surreptitious; they weren't officially sanctioned. Often, cellphone use at work (BYOD) is unauthorized. So successes were covert, the opposite of what I'd hoped.

Approach #3: talk to hospital management. Demonstrate improved nursing workflow, increased efficiency, enhanced job satisfaction and data reporting accuracy. They'll surely license the product and direct IT to connect it to the EHR. This, too, flopped. Managers are largely fear-driven. Looking at a product to buy or a workplace strategy to employ, a manager seeks reduced cost or increased revenue. Something more subtle -- improved workflow, job satisfaction, or data quality -- is rarely worth sticking out your neck.

Yet we know we have a valuable improvement for nurses. How do we get it into their hands?

Approach number four is surely the answer: the EHR vendors will welcome this mobile solution as a value-add for their product. Sure, they already have mobile solutions. E.g. Epic has Rover and Haiku. Other EHR vendors, too, offer mobile extensions. But none is nursing workflow-centric. Nurses rarely use them. These vendors' products will benefit mightily from NurseAssess and NurseMind.

Go tech-savvy nurses! Go enlightened management! Go brilliant EHR vendors!

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