The healthcare industry is made up of a uniquely varied range of institutions of all sizes: from small-town private practices, to multibillion-dollar hospital networks, to even larger insurance carriers. With that breadth in mind, healthcare-focused fintechs can’t just adopt a one-size-fits-all strategy, and instead have to tailor their approaches according to the office and department.

Regardless, certain priorities remain true across the healthcare industry:

Cybersecurity

Perhaps top of mind is the security of digitized patient data. Ransomware attacks against the healthcare industry have been a stubborn issue over the past five years, nearly doubling in 2021, affecting two-thirds of healthcare organizations and exposing almost 20 million patient records.

While most ransomware payments cost less than $500,000, these attacks still represent a major risk to a healthcare organization’s finances, reputation, and ability to function. With those threats front and center, healthcare orgs are prioritizing vendor and financial tools that solve for security, letting patients focus on their health, rather than worry about the integrity of the sensitive data they share with caregivers.

Privacy

Going hand-in-hand with cybersecurity are privacy concerns. Especially since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, reproductive clinics have been particularly cautious about patient and financial data for patients seeking out-of-state care.

Without breaking state laws, fintechs offering further encryption and anonymization will certainly gain greater traction among privacy-focused clinics than those emphasizing other features.

Inflation

Other macroeconomic factors influence medical providers’ openness to new technologies. Most notably, inflationary pressures have pushed networks to adopt digital processes that help them cut costs. From reducing per-disbursement costs by moving away from checks to expediting claims through AI-powered infrastructure, healthcare providers are more willing to adopt cutting-edge technologies in order to stay in the black.

Emphasizing the scalability of these new systems can help assuage anxieties about staffing cuts and other people-operations related priorities. Staff assigned to more manual tasks such as claims and billing can be reskilled and transferred to other administrative areas facing gaps—such as follow-ups to patient care—further improving patients’ end-to-end experience.