I have now written a few pitch presentations in the healthcare sector. Medicine is complicated because professionals use incredibly difficult terminology (often derived from Latin) And the worst for a presentation designer: long words that are impossible to fit in boxes and shapes. A second factor adding to the complexity is the sheer breadth of knowledge required to understand things (doctors study for a long time before being allowed to practice).
The result of this: incomprehensible pitch decks that can only be understood by medical professionals or investors with some sort of medical degree.
In my designs, I try to get the best of both worlds: a presentation that is completely understandable to an outsider, and still credible to a medical professional.
- Start the presentation with a very short 101 on the disease area that can be skipped by professionals. Medicine is complicated, but when you zoom in to one micro therapy area it is actually surprisingly simple. Especially for medical devices (biotech is harder).
- Aim to write the presentation with zero professional terms. Usually I can get there with a few exceptions.
Medicine seems similar to the legal practice, where over the years, practitioners developed their own “secret language”. It is time to open this up, especially when doctors need to face the outside world to get their startup ideas funded.
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