A healthtech startup can run surveys, analyze user data, and even publish a study and still have no science strategy.
That happens when evidence is collected one project at a time, without a clear decision behind it. The work may be credible, but the company cannot easily explain what each piece proves, which business risk it reduces, how the findings should inform product, marketing, sales, or fundraising decisions, or what evidence should come next. A science strategy creates that blueprint.
The urgency is increasing. Galen Growth’s H1 2026 Digital Health Funding Analysis found that funding held steady at $22.6 billion in the first half of 2026, but deal count fell 38%, from 975 to 608. Average deal size rose to $48.9 million, meaning fewer companies are clearing the funding bar and those that do are receiving materially larger checks. Capital has not disappeared, but it is concentrating across fewer companies in a market applying a much sharper filter.
The usual industry answer to this shift is “get more evidence.” That’s not quite right; that advice is exactly what leads founders to end up with a folder of studies that don’t actually move a conversation forward.
Why Do Healthtech Startups Need a Science Strategy
A science strategy is not a study, a publication, or a research roadmap. Those are outputs.
A science strategy is the layer underneath them: the framework that decides which evidence to prioritize, in what order, and what each piece is supposed to prove.
Without that structure, teams tend to make disjointed science decisions one request at a time.
An investor asks a hard question. The team scrambles for a stat.
A sales prospect wants proof. Someone commissions a survey overnight.
A competitor publishes a study. The pressure to “do something” spikes.
Each move might be reasonable on its own. None of them build on each other. None of them add up to a credibility story an outsider can follow.
A science strategy runs the sequence the other way: start from the decision the business needs to make in the next two quarters, work backward to the evidence that would de-risk it, and only then decide what to test, build, or publish.
Why Do Health and Wellness Tech Startups Need a Science Strategy Before Series A?
Founders rarely build a science strategy proactively. In our work with early-stage startup teams, it tends to show up as a reaction to pressure, and that pressure shows up in three places most consistently:
- Investor diligence. By Series A, “we have engaged users” isn’t enough on its own. Diligence now asks whether the product creates outcomes worth the valuation, not just whether people open the app. As capital becomes more concentrated, founders should expect harder questions about what their data actually demonstrates, how strong that evidence is, and what the company still needs to prove.
- Enterprise and health system sales. Selling into a health system, payer, or large employer, means answering questions the consumer market never asked: What population was this tested on? What’s the mechanism? What happens to outcomes data over time? In our experience, founders without a science strategy often discover these questions mid-sales-cycle, which tends to be the most expensive place to discover them.
- Market crowding. When several companies in a category all claim to reduce anxiety, improve adherence, or lower costs, “it works” stops being a differentiator. The company that can say specifically what it improved, for whom, and how it knows, is the one that gets remembered.
If any of those areas are on your horizon in the next six to twelve months, you need a science strategy now, not after the meeting where gaps get exposed.
What Happens If You Skip a Science Strategy?
In our experience, the cost rarely shows up as a single bad meeting. More often, it compounds quietly across fundraising, sales, and product decisions, and it traces back to a common root cause: nobody defined what evidence the company actually needed.
A 2022 JMIR analysis of 224 digital health startups found something worth sitting with: these companies had collectively raised $8.2 billion in venture funding, and 44% had no published clinical trials or regulatory filings to support their products. Funding and clinical robustness weren’t correlated. Plenty of well-capitalized companies had built entire businesses on evidence that didn’t exist yet.
That gap doesn’t stay invisible for long. It tends to surface later, often at a difficult moment: in a term sheet negotiation, a health system procurement review, or a competitor’s case study that makes a specific claim that yours can’t match.
How to Build a Science Strategy in Four Steps
You don’t need an internal science team, a large budget, or a formal study to start. You need four things, in this order.
- Name the decision, not the study.
Before you think about what to test, name the specific decision in front of you in the next two quarters: for example, a fundraise, an enterprise pilot, a payer conversation.
Write down the actual meeting or milestone on your calendar that this evidence needs to be ready for. If you can’t name one, it’s not a priority yet.
Ask “what would someone need to understand or believe in order to say yes” before you ask “what should we study.”
- Find your riskiest open question.
Most early-stage companies have real uncertainty in one or more of the following areas:
- Are you solving the right problem?
- Have you identified the right users?
- Does the product deliver the experience it’s supposed to?
- Are outcomes real and durable?
Rate your confidence across all four, and let the lowest score point you toward your riskiest gap, weighted by whichever is most likely to block your next important business decision.
Your customer, investor, buyer, and partner conversations are probably already telling you this. The question or hesitation that keeps resurfacing is pointing at the question that poses the biggest risk.
- Match the evidence to your stage, not your ambition.
A structured set of customer interviews may answer a question that never required a randomized trial. Reaching for more rigor than the question requires wastes months and burns budget you’ll want later.
Before commissioning anything, ask what the smallest version of this evidence would look like, and whether that smallest version would already change what you do next.
Omada Health didn’t walk into its 2025 IPO with one landmark study. Its 2026 annual filing reported 30 published, peer-reviewed studies built up over years. The evidence base scaled with the company rather than being built in a single sprint before the moment it was needed.
If a method feels like overkill for the question you’re actually asking, it probably is.
- Set a trigger to revisit your science strategy.
A science strategy isn’t a one-time exercise. Build in a checkpoint, tied to your next fundraise, sales cycle, or product milestone, so your priorities update as your business does.
Anchor that checkpoint to something already on your calendar, like fundraising prep, rather than treating it as a separate initiative competing for attention.
Revisit your confidence in each risk area at that checkpoint. Wherever it’s shifted, your evidence priority should shift with it.
That’s the sequence. It doesn’t require hiring a full-time scientist first. It requires knowing what question you’re actually trying to answer, and building evidence in the order your business needs it, not the order that sounds most impressive.
The Takeaway
A science strategy ties the evidence you’re collecting directly to the decisions your business actually needs to make.
In our work with founders, the ones who build that system before Series A tend to walk into diligence, enterprise sales conversations, and competitive positioning with answers instead of scrambling for proof after the fact.
For more detailed guidance, actionable tips, and practical tools for building your own science strategy, the Science Strategy for Early-Stage Founders Masterclass walks through this process step by step. You’ll learn how to identify your riskiest open question, choose evidence that fits your stage and resources, and create a 30-Day Evidence Sprint that supports a real business decision.
Need more tailored support? Book a discovery call to map out where your company stands and what to prioritize next.
FAQ
What is a science strategy for a healthtech startup?
A science strategy is a system that connects the evidence a company collects to the business decisions it needs to make, such as fundraising, enterprise sales, or product direction. It’s different from running a single study or hiring a science team; it’s the framework that decides what evidence matters and in what order.
Do I need a science strategy before raising a Series A?
Most founders benefit from having one well before Series A, since investor diligence, health system sales conversations, and competitive differentiation all tend to demand more specific evidence earlier than founders expect.
Does every healthtech startup need clinical validation before Series A?
No. Not every product requires a clinical trial, and not every healthtech company is making a clinical claim. The appropriate level of validation depends on the product, the claims being made, its intended users, the potential risks, and the expectations of investors or buyers. Early evidence may include customer discovery, usability testing, feasibility data, validated surveys, or retrospective analysis of existing data.
Can I build a science strategy without hiring a Chief Science Officer?
Yes. A science strategy can be built and applied by founders directly, or with fractional scientific support, long before a company has the budget or need for a full-time science hire.
What’s the difference between a science strategy and a research plan?
A research plan describes what studies to run. A science strategy describes how to decide which studies, or which existing data, actually matter for the decisions the business is facing right now.
What happens if a healthtech startup skips building a science strategy?
The cost usually shows up later and at a worse moment: a stalled fundraising conversation, a failed enterprise procurement review, or a competitor’s evidence-backed claim the company can’t match.
Turn your evidence into a competitive advantage.