I led go-to-market, from zero, for Elation Health's clinical AI scribe - the first one built inside the EMR. I owned positioning, pricing and packaging, launch strategy, and enablement.
Problem
Ambient AI scribes were everywhere. A new one seemed to launch every week, and they all made the same pitch: listen to the visit, write the note. Elation's scribe cost more than the standalone tools. On paper that's the worst seat in the house - the expensive option in a crowded, look-alike market. And this was early, before AI was everywhere, so buyers weren't just price-sensitive. They were skeptical that any of it worked. They had reason to be: physician AI use was climbing fast, but the few clinical trials that existed showed uneven results from one tool to the next.
Solution
The obvious play was to out-feature the field. Faster, more accurate, a cleaner note. I didn't think that was winnable, and I didn't think it was the real story. So I refused to compete on "we have a better scribe" and went looking for a different question to sell on.
Approach
Every point solution wrote a note that lived outside the chart. You copied it into your EMR, logged into another vendor, paid another bill, and it did nothing for your coding or your billing. Elation's scribe was the first one built inside the EMR.
So I moved the story off "better scribe" and onto a different question: should documentation be a bolt-on tool at all, or just part of the system you already work in?
That reframe did two jobs at once.
First, it made the premium make sense. The extra cost bought something the standalone tools couldn't: the note flowing straight into your chart, your coding, and how you get reimbursed. I built the pricing and packaging around that outcome, so the price tracked the value it produced.
Second, it let me sell the vision, which was the harder half. The scribe was the wedge. The real story was where an integrated scribe can go that a standalone never can. Once the AI lives in the chart, it drafts the orders, queues the labs, sets up the coding, and the chart starts doing the work. With buyers who weren't yet sold on AI, that vision was what I had to land, and the integration is what made it credible. Positioning, pricing, launch, and the enablement that got the sales team telling that story - that was the work.
Results
- $3M ARR in year one.
- Put Elation on the map for AI in primary care, before AI was table stakes.
The number came from the reframe. We stopped competing on the axis we were always going to lose and started competing on the one we could actually win.