Balancing Compliance and Creativity in Healthcare Technology Innovation [PODCAST]

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Balancing Compliance and Creativity in Healthcare Technology Innovation

In this episode, Erin Rollenhagen, Founder and CEO of People Friendly Tech, discusses balancing compliance and creativity in healthcare technology innovation.

Highlights of this episode include:

• Why many organizations feel like compliance limits innovation.
• Where organizations most often get stuck when trying to innovate in regulated environments.
• How healthcare and finance teams can design digital products that meet compliance requirements while still creating experiences patients or users genuinely love.
• What role user experience plays in improving adoption of healthcare technology.
• Practical strategies leaders can use to help compliance, legal, and innovation teams collaborate instead of working against each other.
• How AI and personalization shaping healthcare technology while still protecting privacy and regulatory requirements.

Kelly Wisness: Hi, this is Kelly Wisness. Welcome back to the award-winning Hospital Finance Podcast.  We’re pleased to welcome Erin Rollenhagen. Erin is the founder and CEO of People Friendly Tech and the author of Love at First Launch: A Visionary’s Guide to Bringing Extraordinary Tech to Life. With nearly two decades of experience guiding visionary executives, Erin has led over 200 successful technology launches spanning startups, healthcare, finance, and other highly regulated industries. Her work has been featured in TechCrunch and Axios, earned national awards, and positioned her as a trusted partner for leaders determined to build more than just functional products. Erin’s approach centers on preserving the magic of the original vision, balancing compliance with creativity, and designing experiences that spark deep emotional connection. Whether working with C-suite innovators or fast-growth entrepreneurs, Erin helps transform bold ideas into platforms that delight users, reshape businesses, and redefine industries.

In this episode, we’re discussing balancing compliance and creativity in healthcare technology innovation. Welcome, and thank you for joining us, Erin.

Erin Rollenhagen: Thanks for having me, Kelly. I’m excited to be here.

Kelly: We’re excited to have you. Well, let’s go ahead and jump in. So, healthcare and finance are highly regulated industries, why do so many organizations feel like compliance limits innovation? And is that actually true?

Erin: There’s a lived experience component to that, where someone may have a great idea, and they start to pursue it, and it turns out that there’s a compliance challenge, and that idea is abandoned. But the issue there is often falling in love with a specific implementation of how to solve that problem. So, compliance presents a set of constraints. And if we were to think back to high school math, if you have an algebra problem and there are no constraints, that problem’s not solvable, right? Well, it’s the same with a lot of the work we do. The constraints don’t have to present a roadblock, but what we need is to develop a sense of creativity, a sense of collaboration, and also a sense of resilience, where we expect there to be some give and take. With compliance, we just have to maintain that belief that our mission is so important that we won’t let ourselves be stymied. And then we just keep exploring options that preserve the spirit of that great idea while also meeting those compliance objectives.

Kelly: That makes a lot of sense. I know innovation is so key, and I know a lot of people do feel like compliance does limit it. You talk about preserving the magic of an original product vision. How can healthcare leaders do that when they’re navigating strict regulations and risk concerns?

Erin: Let’s get practical about this. It’s all well and good to say we’re going to be creative, we’re not going to let ourselves be roadblocked, but then it can be really difficult from a project management perspective when you have a deadline, you’ve set a goal for getting this project out the door, and suddenly something comes up. One thing that we find helps a lot is to schedule a polishing sprint at the end, where we work to bring back the human element that may have been eroded along the way. For example, that can be introducing small things like improvements to language, visuals, maybe even some fun animations that help bring back the spirit of what we were originally trying to solve for, while keeping in place any adjustments that were made to maintain compliance.

Kelly: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me. I love what you said about being practical. I think that really fits there. Erin, in your experience helping launch over 200 technology products, where do organizations most often get stuck when trying to innovate in regulated environments?

Erin: Sometimes there’s a little bit of what we might colloquially think of as a hangover from past experience. So, someone had this fantastic idea. They were passionate about it. They felt that this was really going to help people in a meaningful way, and it fell apart because they couldn’t get past compliance issues. And that’s valid, but it doesn’t have to be that way. And so, what we think about with Teams is preparing them in advance for the fact that this is going to be a give and take, that compliance has to be satisfied. Security has to be satisfied. But also, the user experience has to be brought into that in a way that makes that user feel cared about. And so just understanding that this is going to be a collaborative effort. No one department is going to dominate. It has to be an effort where we bring together all of these valuable perspectives from the people who are trying to protect the organization and the end user, and the people who are trying to push things forward. Just understanding the give and take is expected, and it doesn’t mean we’re going to fail. It just means that we have something to work together to solve. Put all those great brains together.

Kelly: Some great teamwork there, I’m sure.

Erin: Absolutely.

Kelly: Yeah. So how can healthcare and finance teams design digital products that meet compliance requirements while still creating experiences patients or users genuinely love? That sounds like a challenge.

Erin: It can be a challenge. I think the first thing to do is make sure that we’re taking into account the context of the user. And so, what do we mean when we talk about the context of the user? Let’s say someone’s trying to access their health insurance card. What is a situation where someone might need to access their health insurance card? Well, in many cases, it’s because they need healthcare right now. So, you could have someone who’s, for example, at the emergency room with their child, who is having a serious medical event, and they need to access that insurance card. That’s a pretty different emotional situation for that user than if it’s a random Tuesday, there’s no particular stressful event happening. And so, when we take these kind of what seem like mundane tasks like accessing an insurance card, but we put it in the context of something that’s so incredibly important to that user at that moment. That’s the thing they need to do to get access to healthcare for their child. Suddenly, we realize that this is actually a really important experience, even if it seems rather mundane. So, understanding what matters to that user helps us optimize the things that are really important to them. And in turn, when they feel seen in those really critical moments, then they have a more positive view of the organization as a result.

Kelly: Most definitely. I know creating that great experience is key now. So, what role does user experience play in improving adoption of healthcare technology, especially when systems are often designed around regulation rather than people?

Erin: And that’s really key because when we talk about healthcare, virtually everyone we talk to in healthcare, on some level, they’re trying to make people’s lives better. That’s the point of the whole thing. That’s why we’re here. And yet that can get lost amid all of the requirements that have to be satisfied. And so, when we think about the necessary components in making that adoption happen, we have to meet the user where they are, not where we wish they would be. So, if to build on our earlier example talking about that insurance card, that’s going to be many people’s first interactions with a health insurance app, for example, is, “Oh my gosh, there’s something important, emergent happening right now, and I need to get that card.” So that is a great adoption point, a great way to get someone into the app if we do it right. But what do we so often see happen? We get in there, and we say, “Ah, the user is onboarding. We’re going to ask them 20 questions about their preferences.” But the user doesn’t want that. They’re in a high-stakes situation. They just want to get what they came for and leave. And so, when we think about using user experience to spur adoption, it might be a little counterintuitive to what you expect because organizations have an urge to throw everything at that user. “Look at all this great stuff we can do.” And the user is saying, “No, no, no, no, no. I just need to do this one really important thing right now.” So sometimes it’s a little bit of an exercise than restraint of saying, “Yeah, there are 25 great things we can do, but right now we need to recognize that this user is task-oriented, and we’re going to help them accomplish their tasks successfully, which is going to make them feel more confident. And then we have earned the right to show them the other great things we can do.”

Kelly: Very true. And I really liked what you said about meeting the user where they are. I mean, I think we often forget that. So, are there any practical strategies leaders can use to help compliance, legal, and innovation teams collaborate instead of working against each other?

Erin: Yeah. We use a track system where compliance gets a track, legal gets a track, the technical side gets a track, quality gets a track. And all of these tracks are happening simultaneously during the process. And one reason that’s important is sometimes there is organizational cultural process that gets set in motion where we tend to leave the compliance and the legal and the operational items for the end. When we leave them for the end, that’s exactly when they become roadblocks, because we have put ourselves in a situation where we don’t have time to problem-solve. And that’s when people get upset, and projects get put on the shelf, and we run into an outcome that’s not what we’re looking for. And so by using a track system where we start compliance day one, we start working on operations day one, we start working on quality day one. All of that is happening simultaneously with the important stakeholders, not just the people from those departments. All of that ensures that everyone knows that their particular lens is going to get its day in the sun. We have specific times set aside on the schedule to deal with those issues. So that helps people relax, but also making sure that everyone that needs to be in the meeting is in the meeting so that we can have that collaboration happen and make decisions that help move the project forward.

Kelly: Yeah. I would think that representation and collaboration is really key in success there. So, looking ahead, how do you see AI and personalization shaping healthcare technology while still protecting privacy and regulatory requirements?

Erin: The good news here is that AI vendors want to be able to sell their products to healthcare, finance, and other regulated industries. And they know that getting security and compliance right is what makes that possible for companies in highly regulated industries to adopt. And so, they’re getting much better at this. Whether it’s products like AWS Bedrock that allow you to have your own sort of private version of a model, whether it’s industry-specific tools that are more SaaS products, there are a lot of options out there that have taken into account the specific security needs. I think what’s important for healthcare and other regulated organizations is to make sure that they’re evaluating that from day one when they’re evaluating a new product. So we don’t want to get down the path with a particular implementation and then realize it doesn’t meet the security needs. It’s not an easy thing to backfill, but there are great products that are out there and available as long as we’re taking that into account from the beginning and then the final thing that I would say about that is we want to make sure that our use of AI is appropriate to what the consumer feels that we know about them. So, if this is a healthcare app, it’s appropriate to talk to the user about their healthcare information. Maybe reminding them about preventative care opportunities or talking to them about where they are with their deductible if it’s insurance related or opportunities to take advantage of various services in the healthcare realm that makes sense. They might find it invasive, however, if we were to start talking to them about financial information, that there would be no reason for the organization to know. And so, taking into account, what information has the user effectively given us permission to talk to them about, and what information is really beyond that scope and might give people a little bit of a creepy feeling to realize that an organization knew about them and also was making decisions about them.

Kelly: Yeah, it makes sense to stay away from those things that make them feel creepy or that kind of give them the ick factor there. So, well, thank you so much, Erin, for sharing your insights with us on balancing compliance and creativity and healthcare technology innovation. If a listener wants to learn more or contact you to discuss this topic further, how best can they do that?

Erin: They can get in touch with me on LinkedIn. My name’s Erin Rollenhagen, spelled just like it sounds, or they can check out our company website, which is peoplefriendlytech.com, all spelled just like it sounds.

Kelly: Wonderful. Thank you for providing that. And thank you all for joining us for this episode of The Hospital Finance Podcast. Until next time…

[music] This concludes today’s episode of The Hospital Finance Podcast. For show notes and additional resources to help you protect and enhance revenue at your hospital, visit besler.holdings/podcasts. The Hospital Finance Podcast is a production of Besler Holdings.

If you have a topic that you’d like us to discuss on The Hospital Finance Podcast or if you’d like to be a guest, drop us a line at contact@besler.holdings.

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