Global from the Ground Up: Why Your Health Innovation Team Must Think Bigger, Sooner
An idea can spark innovation. But only a globally aligned team can deliver lasting impact.
Every month, I speak with founders and funders around the world who are working on incredible technologies. A new diagnostic. A breakthrough algorithm. A medical device with real potential. These innovations are not the problem. The problem is what happens next.
A promising concept often enters the healthcare ecosystem like a flame full of energy and vision, but without the fuel to last. What starts with clarity quickly meets friction. Regulatory delays. Clinical trial challenges. Investor fatigue. Reimbursement hurdles. And when I ask where their roadmap breaks down, the answer is almost always the same: we built the tech, but we didn’t build the team for scale.
In healthcare, it’s not enough to think fast. We must think forward.
The healthcare landscape does not wait. It does not bend to great intentions. Whether we’re talking about a digital therapeutic in China, a screening tool in Singapore, or wellness applications in London, the rules are the same. If your team isn’t built to navigate global clinical, regulatory, and financial systems, your technology won’t scale. And when technology doesn’t scale, people don’t benefit.
I have led clinical development across four continents. I have sat in rooms with regulators, hospital networks, and frontline physicians. What I’ve learned is that innovation only succeeds when the ecosystem is aligned, and that alignment begins with the team you build from day one.
Let me be direct: most health tech companies overinvest in technology and underinvest in integration. We obsess over features, prototypes, and speed, but ignore the operating system that will carry the innovation into the real world. We build brilliant devices. But we don’t ask who will approve them. Who will fund the trials? Who will reimburse them? Who will distribute them ethically? And who will trust them?
These questions aren’t afterthoughts. They’re the foundation. Because in our sector, timing is everything. And timing is determined by foresight, not luck.
Let’s talk about regulatory readiness. Europe’s MDR. The FDA. The evolving landscape in Asia. These are not checklists; they are strategic terrains. I’ve seen companies misclassify their device in the first 90 days and lose 3 years correcting that mistake. I’ve seen clinical protocols that looked impressive on paper but missed the endpoints that matter to regulators and payers. Every early decision shapes your future flexibility. The earlier you think globally, the fewer dead ends you face.
Then there’s capital strategy. Many founders assume that great ideas will attract great funding. But capital flows towards execution. Global investors want to know: who on your team has brought a product from trial to certification? Who understands the cultural and operational nuances of launching in Germany versus launching in Japan? Do you have a CFO who speaks the language of international reimbursement, or just venture math?
In one of our recent projects, we engaged regulatory advisors from three continents before the prototype was even complete. Why? Because market timing matters. If we had waited until after initial trials to ask how different jurisdictions view that particular device class, we would’ve missed the reimbursement alignment we needed. That would have cost us not only time, but also trust with investors, payers, and ultimately, patients.
Which brings us to reimbursement. This is where even well-funded companies lose momentum. Your end user is not only the patient. It is the health system, the insurer, the public payer. If your solution can’t be reimbursed, it can’t be adopted at scale. And if you’re designing your pricing model or reimbursement pathway after your clinical trial, you’re not planning; you’re gambling.
I’ve worked on devices that had excellent trial data but lacked the right economic story. They were safe. They were effective. But they didn’t get adopted because no one had accounted for the coding, the billing systems, the cost-benefit thresholds that vary country by country. We need to build not only for health impact, but for system fit.
All of this requires a very different kind of team. Not just an R&D team. Not just a regulatory consultant you call once a quarter. I mean a team that functions like a bridge across time zones, disciplines, and worldviews.
Not everyone needs to be an expert in clinical development, regulation, finance, and payer strategy. But every leadership team must embed those perspectives early. Not sequentially. In parallel. Because in healthcare, sequencing is what causes the slowdowns. We start with tech. Then we “bring in” clinical. Then we “hire” someone for reimbursement. But by then, the product is rigid, the trial is fixed, and the investors are impatient.
This is why I say: timelines define innovation. If it takes ten years to launch, it’s not innovation, it’s inertia. The companies that win are those that plan backward from certification, not forward from code.
Let me offer a different model.
When you build your founding team, ask five questions:
Who here has not only studied clinical trials, but also led one from start to finish?
Who understands how our product will be classified in Europe, the US, and Asia?
Who is responsible for building our reimbursement strategy, and when do they start?
Who has direct experience with our target regulatory bodies, and what relationships can they bring?
Are our investors aligned with our market strategy, or are they expecting shortcuts that will cost us time and trust?
If the answers to these questions are vague, your scale-up strategy isn’t ready, no matter how strong your IP is. But if you ask them early, you create something rare: a strategic runway.
You give your company permission to be both fast and precise. You align the science with the system. And you avoid the crisis points that derail so many companies right when they should be accelerating.
Why does this matter? Because the challenges we face are global. Chronic disease. Late diagnosis. Inequity in access. These don’t stop at borders. And neither can we. If we want to meet this moment truly, we need teams that are built for complexity, not just speed.
This is the difference between product teams and health impact teams. Product teams focus on features. Health impact teams focus on outcomes. They know that lives, not just markets, are on the line. And they build accordingly.
Today, I see the same need but on a larger scale. AI is moving faster than regulation. Medtech innovation is rising, but trust is fragile. And across every geography, we see the same tension: technology is ready, but systems are not.
So we must design differently. We must invest differently. And above all, we must team differently.
Innovation will always begin with an idea. But if that idea is to survive, scale, and serve, it needs more than a prototype. It needs a globally coherent strategy. One that honors science, systems, and people.
To every founder, investor, and policymaker reading this: ask yourself not just “what are we building?” but “who is helping us build it and where can they take us?”
Because if we want to deliver not just products, but real, lasting progress, we must build for scale from the very beginning.
This is not about growing faster. It is about growing wiser. Aligning the right minds, the right markets, and the right milestones.
Let’s build health innovation teams that play big, plan smart, and stay aligned.
Because lives, not just companies, are on the line.
Let’s connect to make prevention the standard, not the exception.