Beyond Features: How PocketHealth Turned Medical Image Sharing into a Strategic Platform Play

Beyond Features: How PocketHealth Turned Medical Image Sharing into a Strategic Platform Play

The incumbents saw medical image sharing as a technical problem – just another feature in their sprawling healthcare platforms. In their view, it was simply “a widget within a widget,” as PocketHealth Co-Founder and CEO Rishi Nayyar described in a recent episode of Category Visionaries.

But PocketHealth saw something different: a pivotal moment in the patient journey that could anchor an entirely new kind of healthcare platform.

“Imaging is this special moment,” Rishi explained. “Afterwards, everything in the healthcare journey happens. Your second opinions, what drugs do I go on, what treatment plan, what do I do next?” This insight fundamentally shaped their platform strategy.

Instead of competing on features, PocketHealth positioned around this crucial diagnostic moment. Their approach was built on three key insights:

First, they recognized that patient needs transcend geography. “Our core customer is a patient, and we find that patients are very similar from one region to another,” Rishi shared. “There’s high anxiety before an exam. They want to know how to prepare. They get an exam, they want to know what the results are.”

Second, they saw that existing solutions had failed because they prioritized institutional needs over patient experience. As Rishi noted, “You burn a CD, you hand it to a patient who might not be tech savvy, and they walk it over to their doctor and it works.” Any digital solution needed to be even simpler than this physical process.

Third, they identified a broader shift in healthcare. “We’ve tapped into a massive wave,” Rishi explained. “This concept that patients want access to their healthcare, they want to know what’s going on, they want control, they want to be empowered.”

This positioning strategy has evolved through three distinct phases:

1. Simple File Sharing Initially, they focused on making image sharing as seamless as consumer applications. “It’s healthcare. Yeah, it’s complicated and messy, but it’s just file sharing,” Rishi recalled of their early approach.
2. Healthcare Workflow Platform They expanded to become integral to healthcare workflows. Today, their ideal customers are “academic health systems or more complex medical imaging clinic groups…dealing with complex imaging, complex patient scenarios, and that imaging needs to move around a lot.”
3. Patient Empowerment Platform Looking ahead, Rishi shared, “Right now, we’re starting to go beyond, hey, here’s your records to hey, here’s your records. You want a second opinion? This is what your records mean. These are types of questions you can ask your physician.”

The results validate this strategic evolution. PocketHealth now serves over 700 hospitals and imaging centers across North America, with more than a million patients on the platform. Their growth continues to compound, with Rishi noting “2023 looks like it’s going to match previous years in terms of our growth rate, which is we’re growing multiples every year.”

For B2B founders, PocketHealth’s journey offers crucial lessons about platform positioning:

• Look beyond the technical problem to find the strategic moment
• Build your platform around natural workflow transitions
• Position for where the market is heading, not just where it is

Their story shows that sometimes the biggest opportunities don’t come from building better features, but from recognizing and owning the strategic moments that matter most to users.