Would You Pay
Would you pay for a subscription to an app that holds your health records if you trusted it was safe, in your control, and useful when you needed it? What else would it take to earn that trust? What would it need to do before you’d call it worth paying for? Hit reply or click here to tell me. I’ll report back on what I hear, unfiltered, including if it complicates the story I will tell you below.
Assumptions
I heard it again. Third time this month, actually: on a podcast, from the podium at a conference, and in a hallway at another gathering. Different rooms, different speakers, same sentence, almost word for word: patients won’t pay for a personal health app. It’s said the way you’d say water boils at 212 degrees. Flat. Settled. Not up for debate.
I get it. Subscription fatigue is real. I have a monthly task to review my spreadsheet of paid subscriptions. I try to remove one before adding a new one. But I’m a sucker for supporting people doing good work. Health apps have a track record of overpromising and underdelivering. If I don’t use an app or subscription three times, it goes. Skepticism isn’t dumb; it’s earned.
“Patients won’t pay” isn’t a law of nature. It’s a conclusion people draw after watching a specific kind of product fail. And I don’t think anyone’s actually tested the question I care about, which isn’t whether patients will pay; it’s what motivates people to be eager to pay.
Challenging Assumptions
I’ve been sitting with that distinction. It splits into three parts:
Trust. Would you pay a company you weren’t sure would protect your data, sell it out from under you, or fold in eighteen months and take your records with it? I wouldn’t. Trust isn’t a nice-to-have feature; it’s the product.
Support. Is this a tool you’re handed and left to use on your own, or one where a real person helps you make sense of what you’re seeing? A vault full of your own records is only as useful as your ability to act on them.
Proven usefulness. Has it already saved you time, caught something, or made a difficult appointment easier — or is it a promise of value you’ll get eventually, if you keep paying long enough to find out?
My hunch is that most of the “patients won’t pay” data comes from products that haven’t earned any of these three yet. That isn’t proof I’m right. It’s just a hunch, and I’d rather test it on you than assume it.
My Ask, Again
Would you pay for a subscription to an app that holds your health records if you trusted it was safe, in your control, and useful when you needed it? What would it take to earn that trust—and to be worth paying for? Hit reply or click below to tell me. I’ll report back on what I hear, unfiltered, including if it complicates the story.
Onward, Danny