Episode 204: Building Women's Health Products: From Validation to Scale with Inessa Lurye

Inessa Lurye, former Senior Director of Product and Head of Women's Health at Hinge Health, joins Melissa Perri to discuss the intricacies of launching zero-to-one products within established organizations. Drawing from her experience in developing Hinge Health's comprehensive women's pelvic health program, Inessa shares valuable insights on building business cases, validating products through experimentation, and scaling healthcare innovations responsibly. Her unique perspective spans from government service to leading product development at a $6 billion digital health company.

Inessa Lurye, former Senior Director of Product and Head of Women's Health at Hinge Health, joins Melissa Perri to share her journey from working on homelessness solutions in Washington DC to leading product innovation at Hinge Health. She discusses how her early experiences using technology to solve social challenges shaped her approach to product management and her passion for addressing underserved healthcare needs.

Diving deep into the development of Hinge Health's women's pelvic health program, Inessa reveals the methodical approach to building and validating new healthcare products. She emphasizes the importance of thorough business case development, careful experimentation while maintaining clinical excellence, and the strategic advantages of launching innovative products within an established organization.

Want to learn how to successfully launch and scale healthcare products while navigating clinical requirements and organizational complexity? Tune in to gain practical insights from Inessa's experience in transforming women's healthcare through product innovation.

You’ll hear us talk about:

13:30 - Building a Compelling Business Case for Healthcare Innovation

Inessa shares their months-long process of building the business case for the women's pelvic health program. Through extensive conversations with potential users, physicians, and buyers, they validated both the clinical need and market opportunity. She emphasizes the importance of understanding not just the user needs but also the organizational capabilities and strategic alignment before launching a new healthcare product.

20:16 - Balancing Clinical Excellence with Product Experimentation

In discussing their approach to early product testing, Inessa explains how they maintained high clinical standards while experimenting with the product. Rather than compromising on clinical care, they found ways to manually handle operational aspects while ensuring excellent patient care. This included having deeper clinical outreach, more frequent check-ins, and careful monitoring of clinical outcomes alongside engagement metrics.

40:10 - Leveraging Organizational Strengths in Product Innovation

Inessa outlines the unique advantages of building new products within an established organization like Hinge Health. She describes how they leveraged existing technical infrastructure, clinical operations, and sales channels to accelerate their go-to-market strategy. However, she also addresses the challenges of maintaining momentum and resources for a new product that initially serves a small user base compared to the core business.

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Previous guests include: Shruti Patel of US Bank, Steve Wilson of Contrast Security, Bethany Lyons of KAWA Analytics, Tanya Johnson Chief Product Officer at Auror, Tom Eisenmann of Harvard Business School, Stephanie Leue of Doodle, Jason Fried of 37signals, Hubert Palan of Productboard, Blake Samic of Stripe and Uber, Quincy Hunte of Amazon Web Services

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