Closing the Value Gap in Health Tech

Healthcare technology companies face a paradox: the market has never been more bullish on the sector — recent research showed that AI-enabled companies now capture 55% of all health tech funding and command a 19% premium on deal size — yet public health tech companies still trade at a meaningful discount to cloud peers, despite roughly 2x the revenue growth and free cash flow margin. 

Strong businesses still lose value when the story is unclear: The gap isn’t just a business problem; it’s a narrative problem. Most health-tech companies have a brand platform in one deck, a product story in another, an investor narrative from the CFO’s team, and a sales pitch from field marketing. Individually, each is internally logical, but collectively incoherent and hard for teams to articulate. Too often, companies speak in higher-order benefits without ever making clear what they actually do, where they play, or why they should win an organization’s business. 

We recently sat in a room where a health-tech company pitched its full suite of services. After they finished, our client simply asked at the vendor: “So what is it that you actually do?” 

A Story of Value connects the story across audiences: What closes this gap for clients is a Story of Value: a coherent narrative spine that captures who the company is, the tension it resolves, how it creates value, and why that story justifies premium valuation. When the narrative is properly modulated for priority audience groups, it retains its core value while ensuring resonance for each audience.  

Five Moves That Make a Value Story Credible

Health-tech companies that get this right will: 

• Define a clear frame of reference first. Before reaching for elevated positioning, companies need to answer a basic question: what do they actually do? Name the competitive set, the outcomes, and where they play. In our work with a major healthcare financial services company, the challenge was moving beyond its best-known role in facilitating payments transactions toward a broader frame: bridging gaps in the healthcare financial system, improving the financial experience of healthcare, and aligning the interests of payers, providers, and members. That shift created a stronger platform for growth. 
• Name where AI creates defensible economic value. Being AI-enabled may now be table stakes; it cannot be the whole story. The real question is where AI creates advantage that compounds over time and is difficult to copy. In our work with a major virtual care platform, we saw how quickly AI language can flatten into sameness: personalization, insights, integration. What created credibility was not broader AI rhetoric, but specificity — which data, improving which workflow, producing which measurable result. 
• Ensure the human touch is inextricably linked to AI. In healthcare, meticulous care around data is paramount, especially when it comes to AI use. In helping shape the story for that same virtual care platform, one important choice was to frame AI as an enabler of people, not a replacement for them, with clinician oversight built into the moments that matter most. The important move was not just having that governance mindset internally but making visible to the market where automation stops and expert judgment begins. 
• Thread a single narrative across every audience. Investors, buyers, clinicians, and patients should all recognize themselves in the same core story, with the emphasis adjusted for each audience. We saw this in our previously mentioned work for a healthcare financial services company: by anchoring the company in bridging gaps across the healthcare financial system, the story could resonate across payers, providers, and members without splintering into disconnected messages. One framework, many expressions. 
• Build a system of proof — and earn your claims over time. Sophisticated healthcare buyers are not rewarding ambition alone; they are asking for evidence. Large employers and health systems want proof before integrating new tools and systems, especially when AI claims are involved. In our work with a patient financial engagement platform, the strongest story was not AI for AI’s sake, but AI tied to operating outcomes: higher collections, lower cost-to-collect, faster cash flow, and fewer billing calls through intelligent support. That kind of results-backed proof makes innovation more credible because it connects technology directly to measurable value. 

In the age of AI, the margin for narrative incoherence is zero. The companies that answer the market’s implicit question, “why this company?”, with one credible, evidence-grounded Story of Value will earn the multiples, the deals, and the trust, outpacing competitors without a clear articulation of what they do and why it matters.