Doing the Work That Does Not Scale: A Week of Face‑Time in Mexico City

Building successful healthcare technology requires understanding the real lives of healthcare providers who use it daily. heva's team spent five days in Mexico City meeting with providers, learning that trust compounds through offline relationships and that personal context drives better product decisions than dashboards alone.

This founder story explores how investing in unscalable, in-person relationship building can provide invaluable insights for healthcare technology development and why face-to-face interactions remain essential in building trust with medical professionals.

Why does in-person research matter for healthcare technology?

Building software is only half the job at heva. The other half involves understanding the real lives of healthcare providers who use our platform. While data provides one perspective, observing body language, clinic rhythms, and casual conversations often reveals critical insights that numbers miss.

We traveled to Mexico City to understand the real challenges that healthcare providers face in their daily operations. While our software addresses many problems, there's no substitute for seeing workflows in action and hearing unfiltered feedback from the people who depend on our platform.

What activities build authentic relationships with healthcare providers?

During our five days in Mexico City, we prioritized authentic, personal interactions over formal presentations:

• Early Morning Coffee: Met a provider before patients arrived at 8 a.m. for uninterrupted conversation
• Office Visits: Traveled forty minutes through traffic for ten minutes of face-to-face conversation
• Personal Dinners: Shared meals with providers and their families to hear unfiltered stories about challenges
• Networking Gatherings: Facilitated provider-to-provider conversations about international patient experiences

None of these moments appeared in our CRM as closed deals, but each interaction provided invaluable context for understanding provider needs and building authentic relationships in the healthcare industry.

What insights came from in-person provider visits?

Five days of face-to-face interactions with healthcare providers in Mexico City revealed insights that remote research couldn't capture:

Workflow Pain Looks Different in Person

Watching a receptionist juggle paper files while answering WhatsApp messages provided clearer product specifications than any survey. Observing real workflows in action revealed specific pain points and inefficiencies that providers experience daily.

Personal Context Drives Product Context

Over dinner conversations, we learned that building strong online presence is critical for provider success with international patients. These personal insights led to product commitments we wouldn't have made based on data alone.

Trust Compounds Offline First

A ten-minute hallway conversation accomplished more for future partnership discussions than a month of polite emails. In-person interactions build trust foundation that enables productive business relationships.

What ROI exists for unscalable relationship building?

While these meals and travel expenses may not immediately convert to revenue, every minute spent in a provider's environment sharpened our empathy and improved our product decisions. In healthcare—a market built on trust—this investment in understanding feels like the right long-term strategy.

Immediate benefits of in-person provider research include:

• Enhanced Empathy: Deeper understanding of provider challenges and constraints
• Better Product Decisions: Real-world context informing feature development
• Trust Building: Foundation for long-term provider partnerships
• Market Intelligence: Insights into regional healthcare practices and needs
• Authentic Feedback: Unfiltered input on platform strengths and weaknesses

These insights directly inform our development priorities and help us build solutions that truly serve international patients and their healthcare providers.

What comes next after in-person provider research?

Following intensive in-person research, the challenge becomes translating insights into actionable product improvements and maintaining the relationships that enabled these learnings.

Our next steps include:

• Document Observations: Log workflow insights and feed them into development sprints
• Maintain Community: Plan follow-up meetups to keep provider conversations active
• Long-term Perspective: Accept that some relationship benefits emerge only after sustained engagement
• Iterative Improvement: Use provider feedback to guide platform enhancements
• Scale Learning: Apply insights to improve provider experiences across all markets

The investment in unscalable, in-person work continues to inform how we serve healthcare providers and their international patients more effectively.

Frequently Asked Questions About Healthcare Provider Research

References

• Trust Is The Hardest Product To Build
• Selling in a Foreign Language: Founder Lessons from Building heva
• From Great to Good Enough

Disclaimers

Business Experience: This article shares specific business experiences and founder lessons. It is not professional business advice. Individual results may vary based on market conditions, cultural factors, and execution strategies.

Platform Information: heva is a healthcare coordination platform connecting patients with providers—we do not provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Business relationship strategies should be evaluated based on individual circumstances and market conditions.