Why Healthcare Innovation Needs More Than Great Ideas

Healthcare startups are often discussed as if the best idea naturally rises to the top. In his conversation with Jesús E. Moreno, Steven Collens argues for a less romantic and more useful view: innovation depends on infrastructure. On the episode page, the CEO of MATTER describes what he has learned from helping build startup communities in Chicago and from leading a healthcare incubator that, according to the episode description, has supported more than 1,000 startups.

What makes this episode valuable for MedTech, Biopharma, and clinical leaders is that it stays close to execution. Collens is not talking about innovation as a slogan. He is talking about the conditions that make new products adoptable: the right mentors, the right buyers, the right partners, and the right setting for collaboration.

Healthcare needs its own startup architecture

One of Collens' clearest points is that healthcare could not simply borrow the playbook of a general tech incubator. When he looked at Chicago's strong base of pharma, devices, diagnostics, providers, insurers, and research institutions, he saw a mismatch: the region had major healthcare assets, but the entrepreneurial output was not keeping pace.

His explanation is simple and important for founders who wonder why healthcare can feel slow even in vibrant startup cities: "It's a separate community. It's a separate set of investors. It's a separate set of mentors." That observation goes beyond Chicago. Healthcare startups usually need longer development cycles, more specialized guidance, and a very different map of stakeholders than a typical software company.

That matters because many founders still underestimate how much their environment shapes their odds. A strong healthcare company does not just need office space or a demo day. It needs access to people who understand reimbursement, hospital operations, regulatory constraints, procurement cycles, and how clinical evidence influences adoption. Collens' point is that if those supports are missing, even a promising solution can stall before it has a fair chance to prove value.

Collaboration is not optional in healthcare

Collens also makes a case against the old startup fantasy that small companies will simply outmaneuver the giants. In healthcare, he argues, the more realistic model is interdependence. Large companies are built to operate at scale; startups are built to move quickly and test new approaches. Neither side is very good at being the other.

That is why MATTER was designed around a specific idea: "Collaboration is the only way to really do it in healthcare." In practice, that means helping large companies work with entrepreneurs more effectively and helping entrepreneurs understand what will actually resonate inside big organizations.

This is a useful reframing for both sides. For established pharma and health system leaders, startup engagement is not a branding exercise. It is a way to keep pace with technologies that are evolving faster than internal structures usually can. For founders, partnership is not surrender. It is often the only realistic path to distribution, validation, and scale.

The friction, as Collens describes it, comes from real structural differences. Big companies and startups move at different speeds, tolerate risk differently, and evaluate opportunities through different lenses. The practical lesson is that successful collaboration needs design, patience, and people who can translate across those worlds.

Clinical trial tools gain traction when they reduce friction

When the conversation turns to clinical trials, Collens offers a measured view. He notes that some early decentralized-trial solutions did not deliver the value many expected during and after the pandemic. But he also says the combination of persistent entrepreneurs, maturing data infrastructure, and faster AI development is creating better conditions for adoption.

His comments on recruitment are especially relevant. He calls out the long timelines for enrolling studies as a problem the industry should no longer accept, and he points to newer approaches that can identify eligible patients faster and more precisely. He also sees sponsors becoming more comfortable with technologies that can improve how trials are designed and run.

Just as important, he highlights a mindset shift: trial innovation works better when it starts with participant experience. Describing one example, he said, "They treat the participants like real customers and the process, it's like a product." That idea is bigger than any one company. If a trial is burdensome, confusing, or inconvenient, recruitment slows and dropout risk rises. If participation is easier, the study has a better chance to finish on time and at lower cost.

Collens also notes that some pharma companies are already incorporating real-world evidence more often in their studies, not only for trial purposes but to strengthen later conversations with payers. His broader point is that adoption appears to be accelerating, but only for tools that fit real workflows and solve expensive bottlenecks.

The companies that scale know their market and create room to work together

Near the end of the episode, Collens connects two ideas that founders often treat separately: where collaboration happens and how well a startup understands its market. MATTER's newer physical space, he explains, is smaller than before but designed more intentionally for collaboration than for traditional coworking. That choice reflects his belief that remote work can preserve individual productivity while weakening team dynamics, iteration, and innovation.

That same logic applies to startup execution. Healthcare solutions rarely succeed because the technology alone is impressive. They succeed when the team has done the hard work of understanding how the product fits into a messy environment with multiple stakeholders. As Collens puts it, "Who's actually going to buy it? Who's going to benefit from it? Who's going to use it?"

Those questions sound basic, but in healthcare they are difficult because the buyer, the user, and the beneficiary are often not the same person. A founder may be solving a real problem and still fail if the economic case is weak, the workflow burden is too high, or the wrong department is being asked to champion adoption. That is the gap between a promising pilot and a durable business.

Listen to the episode

For leaders trying to build, evaluate, or adopt healthcare innovation, this episode offers a grounded framework: create the right environment, design for collaboration, and solve for the realities of adoption. You can listen to the full conversation with Steven Collens on the episode page.

About Global Trial Accelerators™

Global Trial Accelerators™ is the podcast for MedTech, Biopharma and Radiopharma founders navigating first-in-human clinical trials. It is hosted by Jesús E. Moreno and produced by bioaccess®, a CRO purpose-built for first-in-human trials across the Americas.