There are literally thousands of point solutions in dozens of health benefits verticals vying for attention, time, effort and budget. Evaluating them all is impossible and conducting an RFP for each area is unrealistic. Prioritizing your problems, let alone solutions, is extremely hard: how does a healthcare purchaser choose between heart disease and cancer? High deductibles or narrow networks? Care coordination or second opinion?
As a former innovation lab founder at a Fortune 500 consultant, I have grappled with these questions for years. My clients and colleagues expected me to be aware of everything valuable in the market. Failure could cost my clients millions of dollars. The challenge was determining which problems mattered most and which vendors addressed the root causes to make an impact. Through trial and error, an algorithm emerged to sort past the hype to find transformative solutions, which can be remembered shorthand as one-two-three-four-five:
