Innovation Must Own the Friction It Creates

Gil Bashe

Health does not suffer from a shortage of ideas. Every day, scientists, engineers, clinicians and entrepreneurs create medicines, devices and technologies intended to diagnose disease earlier, guide treatment, accelerate research, reduce administrative costs and help people better understand and manage their health. The commitment is extraordinary. The science is astounding.

Yet an uncomfortable question remains: Why do so many worthwhile innovations add work for patients, physicians, nurses and care teams rather than ease their burden?

A platform promises to save physicians time but shifts attention from patients to the screen. A device provides valuable data but also generates more alerts for nurses to silence. A patient tool promises access but adds another portal and password. A new medicine secures approval; however, patients and clinicians must still navigate coverage. Innovation may meet the clinical challenge, but the people surrounding it inherit the friction.

Friction has a human toll. Patients face delays and repeat their stories. Physicians lose time defending necessary care. Nurses spend more time with screens and less with patients. Office teams manage callbacks, missing information, denials and disconnected systems.

For pharmaceutical and medical device companies, this is more than an operational issue. It shapes communication, adoption and reputation. The experience surrounding an innovation becomes inseparable from the product itself. A company should receive societal recognition for confronting disease, yet friction can quickly turn applause into criticism.

The Lesson Behind “Buy Now”

Amazon’s “Buy Now” experience established a baseline expectation. The lesson is not that medicine should imitate retail, but that Amazon studied the entire journey from consumer intention to completed action and removed friction at every step.

Product strategist Mudra Rastogi traces the idea to the late 1990s, when each cart, form and payment screen gave consumers another reason to abandon a purchase. Amazon’s 1-Click feature, patented in 1997 and introduced in 1999, removed those barriers by remembering payment and delivery details. Rastogi’s larger point is that Amazon did more than speed checkout. It built confidence, habit and trust by reducing cognitive load.

That principle matters in health. People can bank, travel, communicate and shop through clear digital pathways. Then they enter health care and confront forms, referrals, prior authorizations, hold times and repeated requests for the same information. They navigate these requirements while frightened about a diagnosis, worried about a family member or uncertain whether they can afford care.

The system behaves as though the patient has all the time in the world to help manage its workload.

Clinical judgment requires deliberation. Evidence must be reviewed. Privacy must be protected. Safety cannot be sacrificed for speed. Yet essential rigor should not become an excuse for unnecessary burdens. Patients do not experience the regulatory rationale behind each requirement. They experience the cumulative weight of the process. Too often, innovation exhausts the very people it is meant to help.

FDA Approval Is a Milestone, Not the Patient Journey

The words FDA Approves New Therapy carry enormous meaning. They represent years of scientific exploration, investment, regulatory persistence and hope. For researchers and companies, the announcement marks a hard-earned achievement. For patients and families, it signals that a new possibility may finally be within reach.

However, approval is not the finish line. It is the beginning of another journey.

Leqembi, for people with mild cognitive impairment or mild dementia due to Alzheimer’s disease, illustrates how the treatment journey evolves with innovation. It initially required intravenous infusions every two weeks in a clinical setting, along with confirmation of amyloid pathology, safety screening and close monitoring for amyloid-related imaging abnormalities. FDA has now approved the therapy as an injectable that patients may administer at home themselves or with help from a caregiver.

This commitment to clinical progress reduces travel and infusion-center visits. It also shifts more responsibility to the patient, caregiver, physician and company to make the treatment process clear, safe and supported.

CASGEVY offers another example of owning the journey. The one-time gene therapy infusion requires evaluation, stem-cell collection, conditioning chemotherapy, treatment and recovery at an authorized center. Vertex helps patients understand each stage, find treatment sites and connect with care managers who support education, logistics and access, including eligible travel and lodging assistance.

This is what it means to own the friction surrounding innovation.

It does not mean that every obstacle disappears or that a company has any influence over coverage decisions, hospital processes or personal circumstances. It means the company has taken the time to understand the experience beyond the scientific and clinical touchpoints. It has anticipated where people may feel uncertain, overwhelmed or alone and created pathways that help them navigate with greater clarity and confidence.

Most pharmaceutical companies do this work well. The opportunity is to make this level of journey ownership the expectation for every medicine. Each regulatory milestone creates a new experience and communication must accompany the patient from preapproval through access, treatment and ongoing support.

This is not an extension of the launch plan. It is the “rubber meets the road” moment when the industry’s promise becomes part of the care process.

When companies help people understand what comes next, navigate complexity and feel supported, they do more than advance adoption. They recognize that the journey evolves, both emotionally and structurally. Needs change, responsibilities shift and new points of friction emerge. Companies build trust and reputation by anticipating those changes and continuing to support people as the realities of care unfold.

Medical Devices Carry a Life-Cycle Responsibility

Medical device companies face the same obligation. A connected device does not finish its journey when it clears regulatory review, ships to the hospital or produces its first reading. It must fit within clinical workflow, connect securely, perform as intended for the patient population it serves, and provide continuous support.

Pulse oximeters offer a sobering example. The devices became everyday symbols of monitoring during the COVID-19 pandemic, yet evidence showed that performance could differ across skin pigmentation. FDA subsequently proposed updated testing and labeling recommendations intended to improve accuracy across skin tones. The lesson is broader than a single device category: the endpoint cannot be defined simply as “the device generated a number.” The meaningful endpoint is whether that number can be trusted.

Cybersecurity creates another touchpoint cascade. FDA current guidance addresses cybersecurity in device design, labeling and premarket submissions, while Federal requirements call for manufacturers of connected devices to maintain processes for updates, patches and software transparency. That means the product journey includes the hospital chief information security officer, biomedical engineering, IT integration, vulnerability disclosure, patch deployment, user communication and eventual device retirement.

A technically brilliant device or digital solution that leaves a care team guessing about data flows, software updates, cybersecurity, training or downtime is not frictionless innovation. It is unfinished implementation.

From Messages to Touchpoint Stewardship

This is where communicators must strengthen conventional product support plans.

The task is no longer simply to develop messages for audiences. It is about understanding the customer at every possible touchpoint: what people need to know, what they must do next, what may stop them, and who owns the answer when access differs by payer, hospital, geography or site of care.

That understanding has become more urgent. A few strokes on a keyboard can now unite a patient community, expose a recurring obstacle and turn private frustration into public pressure. Matthew Zachary’s We the Patients reflects this shift, giving voice to people who are no longer willing to suffer the system quietly.

Communicators should be part of the adoption conversation from the start. They can bring patient and clinician experience into planning, identify where friction may emerge and help leaders respond before frustration hardens into distrust. This is a deeper layer of customer understanding, one that recognizes patient voice as a source of insight, influence and accountability.

Every communication and marketing plan should include a friction map alongside the stakeholder map, tracing the innovation from peer-reviewed evidence and regulatory decisions through coverage, budgeting, procurement, cybersecurity, clinical workflow, patient onboarding, adherence, support and long-term use.

At each stage, leaders should ask what new step has been created, whose time it consumes and what existing task it replaces. They must consider what information may be missing or misunderstood, who owns the handoff when something goes wrong and how the organization will detect friction before it becomes distrust. This is not promotion. It is customer stewardship.

Productive friction occurs when clinicians, patients, engineers, operators, access teams, investors and communicators challenge an idea early. It reveals blind spots and strengthens the solution. Destructive friction appears when those conversations occur after the product has been designed and the market is expected to shoulder the burden of implementation.

From “Not My Problem” to Shared Ownership

In Healing the Sick Care System: Why People Matter, I describe a health system rich in scientific brilliance and technological potential, yet constrained by structures that have calcified around that progress. Complexity too often overwhelms clarity. Stakeholders talk past one another and the people we seek to serve are too often left carrying the burden.

Policies and financial bumper guards alone will not repair this problem. No reimbursement formula can manufacture empathy. No artificial intelligence platform can compensate for the absence of leadership and governance. Technology should augment human expertise and expand our capacity to care. It cannot become an opt-out clause for responsibility.

Health innovators must accept a broader definition of success. The science must work. The evidence must hold. The economics must be sustainable. The data must be trusted. The system must be secure. The workflow must be realistic. Access must be understandable. The people expected to use the innovation must understand how it improves their work and their lives.

That broader definition of success asks more of product innovation companies, yet it also creates greater value. When companies reduce friction, they strengthen relationships. When they anticipate access barriers, they demonstrate that they understand the people's needs. When leaders connect scientific promise to lived experience, innovation moves beyond process and into confidence and a stronger reputation.

There is a 19th-century adage: “If you can break it, you can fix it.” We built these steps. We are the architects of these processes. We accepted these silos. We can examine them, challenge them and remove what no longer serves its purpose. It requires empathy, collaboration and courage.

This is not a choice between head and heart, organizational interest and personal experience, commercial success and human satisfaction. The strongest innovations bring them together. They create value for the company by fostering confidence in the clinician, clarity for the patient, and a smoother path through the health system.

That is the deeper lesson of “Buy Now.” Health innovation earns the same confidence when companies take responsibility for every touchpoint between breakthrough and benefit. Those experiences shape the relationship, and the relationship shapes reputation. That is how invention becomes adoption, adoption becomes confidence and confidence becomes lasting value.

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Gil Bashe is Chair Global Health and Purpose, FINN Partners.