WHy AI (and digital health) don't scale easiLy

posted 'Healthcare AI isn’t early. It’s unusable.' a week ago. It received staggering 166k views. Here’s the analysis from the 250+ comments.

1. Workflow isn’t broken. It’s overloaded.

Clinicians aren’t resisting innovation because they hate change - they’re drowning. Any added task, even a ‘simple’ extra screen, breaks the dam.

2. AI doesn’t fail from inaccuracy. It fails from irrelevance.

Many AI solutions “perform” technically, but make no impact clinically. Why? Because usage dies after the pilot. Or worse - never takes off.

3. EHRs are the gatekeepers - and the gate is locked. Integration friction is the most cited death blow. The EHR isn’t just hard to integrate with - in many systems, it's actively hostile to it.

4. Clinicians are not your beta testers.

Pilots succeed because early adopters go out of their way to make it work. But daily users don’t have that luxury. Enthusiasm doesn’t scale. Fatigue does.

5. Real success is when AI disappears.

People don’t want AI to take over. They want it to get out of the way. If a tool requires explanation, training, or extra clicks - it's another burden.

6. Founders are solving the wrong problem.

Many founders design for the pitch, not the clinic. They mistake demo excitement for day-to-day viability. And they optimise for what looks like innovation, not what actually works.

7. Infrastructure lags behind ambition.

Even well-intentioned solutions can’t run in settings that lack basic infrastructure. Founders often overlook this reality and build for the wrong conditions.

8. AI is being sold as magic. It’s not.

There’s a growing fatigue with “AI-washing” - marketing tools as transformative AI when they’re barely rule-based logic wrapped in a new UI. People are calling it out.

9. Adoption doesn’t require new training. It requires no training.People aren’t looking for tools that look smart. They want tools that feel simple.

TL:DR:

The clinical environment is not a sandbox. It’s a pressure cooker.

Tools that assume time, energy, or attention will not survive.

Success in HealthTech is not innovation. It’s invisible impact.

Here is the original post - https://lnkd.in/eFxNAWXC

I think I'll dive into these themes over the next couple of weeks.