The Digital Health Founder’s Guide to Hiring a Chief Medical Officer
By: Ivor B Horn
Tags: Startup Founders, Startup, Digital Health

The Digital Health Founder’s Guide to Hiring a Chief Medical Officer

Recently I’ve gotten a lot of questions about the role of the Chief Medical Officer (CMO) in a digital health company. Over the years, I’ve had the good fortune to speak with a lot of digital health companies at different stages in their journeys — helping them to define their business model, transform their clinical operations or product offerings and define their role in the marketplace. Depending on how long you have been in the healthcare space, the role of a CMO could mean a few things to you.

In general, a CMO is the clinical voice for the company, internally and externally putting the mission of the company in context to the larger healthcare landscape. Helping the market and the team understand where the company fits and why it matters. There are many names for a “CMO,” but the essence of the role is pretty consistent.

Certain patterns have emerged from founders trying to understand how a CMO might best fit into their business. The majority of questions come from two types of people, founders trying to understand how a CMO might best fit into their business and physicians considering their first CMO role what they should expect. I will focus on the former in this post.

For founders, before we discuss the types of CMO for your startup, it is best to answer a couple of questions:

What do you need? A CMO role can be of great value at some stage in your company’s journey. Think about what is of most value to your company now and in the next 12 months. Often when I speak to early-stage founders they have a laundry list of things they want the CMO to do that are impossible for one person. What they should consider is a Medical Advisory Board, subject matter expert or advisor with a broader team to execute on their recommendations. However, it is important to know when that is not enough and you need to hire a CMO and staff as well. An experienced advisor or board member will be able to help you know the difference. What can you afford? A full-time CMO is not a minor expense for a start-up. Will part-time support do? Or maybe you just need an advisor for right now. Perhaps you have gotten to the stage where you are organized enough to pull together a Medical Advisory Board (MAB). For many start-ups, a well-organized and utilized MAB can serve the role of the Strategy/Product CMO (more detail on types of CMOs below) in the short term. The best MABs have members who will invest their knowledge (intellectual property) into the development of the company and believe in the company’s mission, vision, and values. Once your business has achieved a level of growth and you’ve hired a CMO, re-evaluate how you want to utilize the MAB. Their make-up may need to change.

Once you’ve answered those questions, now is a good time to think about what type of CMO you need. Depending on a company’s maturity, a CMO will likely have a mix of responsibilities. Understanding initial priorities will focus a founder or CEO’s search and also help CMO candidates assess whether the role is a good fit for them. I have listed a few different flavors of CMO to consider. A big thank you to Michael Yang from Omers Ventures for helping me shape these categories.

The Sales & Marketing CMO

To some degree, every person in an organization is in sales and marketing. For a digital health company, the CMO helps the customer understand why your solution matters. Their job is to translate the data or evidence that your solution actually works and why that matters for the customer. The other part of the role of the Sales and Marketing CMO is to stay on top of what is happening in the industry and connect to the digital health community in an authentic way. Yes, they should be connecting to your solution, but that’s not all they should be talking about. How are they building relationships online and offline with potential collaborators? Free them up to write thought pieces that analyze the industry, not just marketing materials. If they don’t have that freedom it is not helpful to the company or your brand.

The Operations CMO

This type is particularly important if you have a service component to your solution. An operations CMO can help make sure you measure what matters. For digital health companies, there is always a tug between improving health outcomes and improving sales/margin — especially when the efforts may be divergent. We have seen the data on wellness solutions and digital wearables and their impact on actually improving a patient’s health. An Operations CMO also needs to have a strong understanding of the regulatory landscape as it relates to your company, as well as population health and performance improvement. Segmentation of a population is more than managing the number of people you care for but understanding who the best people to help. Additionally, performance improvement includes standardizing processes to ensure that the quality of service you provide drives to the right outcomes whether you are serving two hundred or two million people. An Operations CMO draws a clear picture between process, performance, and outcomes for your team and helps your organization understand what metrics get you there while always keeping the service of people as your north star.

The Strategy/Product (S/P) Development CMO

There is definite potential for overlap with the sales and marketing CMO type, but the S/P Development CMO is focused on the vision for the company. In the early stages, as a co-founder or early member of the leadership team, the Strategy/Product Development CMO can play an important role in shaping the company. This is a person who knows the literature to support your solution, has thought a lot about what is needed, and has a perspective on how to get there. They can also play an important role in the development of research studies to generate evidence to support the effectiveness of your solution. This person can also be a subject matter expert on product development. But most importantly, the S/P CMO should guide you in what you need for the company that you haven’t thought about yet. For example, understanding the latest regulatory changes that may impact your product roadmap.

The embodiment of the CMO role in digital health can be a person or a group of people. The title can be whatever you choose. The messages that I hope founders and CEOs take away from this post are 1) be purposeful about what you need for your business model, and 2) this is an important part of your leadership team — treat the selection process accordingly.

My hope is that this adds some insights into the space, generates conversation — and even a little bit of debate. If you’ve found this helpful and know of any founders/colleagues that can use this — please share with them!