As I prepare to retire at the end of 2025 after leading product development and technology innovation at Proficient Health, I want to reflect on what I’ve learned about innovation in healthcare technology: it is not possible without customer collaboration. This journey began at MD Interconnect and continued after we became part of Proficient Health in 2019.
Why Healthcare Technology Innovation Requires Customer Partnership
Product development and innovation is hard. The key goal is to develop product capabilities that are helpful to customer workflows and actually get used by customers. You can build the most technically sophisticated platform in the world, but if it doesn’t solve real problems in real workflows, it sits unused.
This is why customer collaboration isn’t optional—it’s the foundation of meaningful innovation. The technology landscape changes too quickly, workflows evolve constantly, and user expectations rise every day. What worked last year may not work today. What customers think they need often differs from what they actually need once they start using a product.
I have had the fortune of working with customers who understood this reality and were willing to partner with us through the messy, iterative process of building something that truly works.
The Iterative Development Process That Drives Innovation
Our approach at Proficient Health follows a repetitive loop that may seem simple on the surface, but requires deep trust and commitment from customer partners:
First, we get input from customers on a specific challenge or workflow gap they’re experiencing. This isn’t a one-hour requirements gathering session—it’s ongoing dialogue about what’s working, what’s not, and why.
Second, we develop product capabilities based on that input, but in a general way that solves their specific problem while also benefiting other customers. This is the art of product development: taking individual feedback and building universal solutions.
Third, we release these capabilities to customers and watch how they actually use them. Real-world usage often reveals insights that no amount of planning can predict.
Fourth, we gather feedback on what’s working and what could be better, then return to step two and repeat the process.
It is impossible to get a product right in this day and age without using this iterative approach. The customers who are willing to work through this cycle with us become true innovation partners—not just users, but co-creators of better solutions.
Selected Real-World Use Cases from My Healthcare Technology Tenure
These collaboration examples span the full spectrum of our customer base—from large academic hospital systems to community hospitals, ACOs, CINs, independent specialty practices, and everything in between. Across different sizes, geographies, and organizational structures, the pattern is the same: when customers engage in the iterative development process, we build better products together.
PH Connect®
- Base Platform: Message preference routing, physician availability settings, and backup role configurations.
- Consult Notifications: Delivery of consults via notifications to physician devices, including routing strategy and Epic integration.
- Medical Alerts: Delivery of medical alerts to care teams using a chat mechanism for real-time communication.
PH Exchange®
- Base Platform: Sender and receiver referral processes with Kanban board views for care coordination teams.
- Network and Practice Reporting Dashboards: Reporting metrics key to managing referral networks—network leakage, appointment scheduling timeliness, and closed-loop completion rates.
- Referral Interface for Specialists: Interface designed specifically for independent radiology groups, imaging centers, and specialty practices managing high-volume referrals.
PH Capture®
- Service Request Workflows: Customization of service request statuses to enable organizations to configure workflows to match their processes.
PH Platform®
- Document Triage: Enhancements for tagging and filtering documents to streamline workflows and reduce time spent hunting for information.
- Connect-Exchange Integration: Notification of PH Exchange® referral status changes to ordering providers through the PH Connect® mobile app, creating closed-loop communication.
Gratitude to Our Customer Partners
I would like to thank all our customer partners for their invaluable input over the years. We could not have gotten where we are without you.
It has been a pleasure working with everyone—some directly and some through key members of our Product and Technology team. The relationships we’ve built go beyond vendor-customer transactions. These are partnerships built on a shared commitment to making patient referrals work better for care teams and, ultimately, for patients.
To our customer partners: thank you for trusting us with your challenges, for your patience through iterations, and for your commitment to improving patient care through better referral management. The innovation we’ve achieved together will continue to benefit patients and healthcare organizations for years to come.
I am very excited for the future. You are in good hands. We have a great team at Proficient Health, and I am confident in what is coming on our roadmap in 2026 and beyond. After all, at Proficient Health, referrals are all we do—and we do them right. The team will continue building solutions that simplify referral workflows, increase revenue, and ensure patients access quality care.
Proficient Health specializes in intelligent patient referral management technology solutions that help healthcare organizations drive revenue, strengthen provider relationships, and accelerate care access. Contact us to learn more.