Ellie Bakker unveils The Growth Equation at Digital Health Festival

Healthcare businesses are scaling faster than ever, yet many are still leaking growth through invisible cracks.

Some generate strong interest but struggle to convert customers. Others build awareness but fail to establish trust. Many invest heavily in marketing without understanding which numbers actually matter.

Speaking at Digital Health Festival 2026 in Melbourne last week, Splice Marketing founder and Veri Health co-founder Ellie Bakker argued the issue is often not effort, but misdiagnosis.

The Growth Equation came from seeing the same problems repeated hundreds of times across healthcare businesses,” Bakker told attendees.

“Different businesses, different services and different stages of growth, but the same breakdowns underneath.”

The framework was developed after nearly a decade working exclusively with healthcare businesses across Australia, from clinics and allied health providers through to scaling healthtech companies. According to Bakker, many organisations focus on surface-level growth symptoms instead of identifying the true constraint limiting performance.

The biggest mistake businesses make is trying to solve the wrong problem,” she explained.

“Sometimes businesses think they have a marketing problem, when actually the issue is trust. Sometimes they’re generating attention but making adoption too difficult. Sometimes they’re measuring the wrong things entirely.”

At the centre of the framework are four interconnected variables: demand, trust, conversion and measurement. Bakker argues that when one weakens significantly, the entire system feels the impact.

Demand: does the market already exist?

The first variable is demand, which Bakker believes is widely misunderstood by healthcare businesses attempting to scale.

Some businesses enter markets where demand already exists. In these cases, success depends less on convincing people they have a problem and more on becoming the provider they recognise and trust.

“There’s already a real need to help GPs dealing with crippling administrative pressure,” Bakker said.

In those markets, the problem isn’t whether demand exists. The problem is whether your business has enough visibility, trust and brand awareness to be the solution people choose.”

In increasingly crowded healthcare markets, strong positioning and brand credibility have become critical differentiators.

The second type of demand is more difficult to build. This occurs when businesses create products or services people do not yet realise they need.

Here, growth relies heavily on education and awareness.

“Your product needs to solve a real problem at the right time, and if people don’t yet realise they’re looking for a solution like yours, then you first need to build demand,” Bakker explained.

She pointed to Facebook and the rise of AI scribes as examples of technologies that initially required significant market education before achieving mainstream adoption.

“No one knew the world needed Facebook until Facebook was created. No one knew GPs needed AI scribes until they were launched.”

Trust: healthcare’s most fragile growth variable

But visibility alone is no longer enough.

Bakker described trust as one of the most commercially fragile assets in modern healthcare, particularly in an environment flooded with misinformation, AI-generated content and growing scepticism around digital communication.

In healthcare, trust is everything,” she said.

Trust influences far more than reputation. It directly affects referrals, clinician adoption, partnerships, patient confidence and long-term retention.

According to Bakker, healthcare organisations can lose momentum quickly following data breaches, poor patient experiences or credibility issues, often creating immediate opportunities for competitors.

“Trust has become the fastest variable to break and the hardest one to rebuild,” she said.

She also highlighted the increasing value of authentic thought leadership and trusted visibility within healthcare media.

“In increasingly crowded markets, businesses are placing greater value on trusted industry publications, peer validation and consistent expert visibility to strengthen long-term brand trust.”

Conversion: reducing friction

Even businesses with strong awareness and credibility can still lose momentum at the point of adoption.

The third variable in The Growth Equation is conversion, which Bakker describes as the pathway between interest and action.

Many healthcare businesses unintentionally create friction across onboarding, implementation and communication, making adoption harder than necessary.

The easier you make it for people to adopt your product or service, the easier growth becomes,” she said.

Importantly, Bakker argues conversion should not only be measured through acquisition. Retention and repeat usage are often stronger indicators of whether a product genuinely integrates into clinical workflows or patient behaviour.

“And once they’ve converted, how many times they come back to use your product or service is an indicator of how frictionless it is.”

She also discussed what she calls “defendability” within enterprise healthcare sales cycles, where a single internal advocate is often responsible for securing organisational buy-in.

“You need to equip your champion with the information they need to defend you when you’re not in the room,” Bakker explained.

“That means giving them clear outcomes, proof points, data, case studies and language they can take back to their organisation to justify why your solution matters.”

According to Bakker, healthcare businesses that scale successfully are often those making decisions simpler, not more complicated.

Measurement: understanding what actually matters

The final variable is measurement.

Bakker warned many healthcare businesses still focus on vanity metrics that may look impressive in reports but reveal little about genuine commercial performance.

For some organisations, the most important metrics may include booked consults, referrals or patient acquisition. For others, success may depend on retention, utilisation rates, recurring revenue or enterprise adoption.

“If you don’t know which numbers matter, you can’t diagnose what’s actually limiting growth,” she said.

She also stressed the importance of understanding which metrics matter most to customers, particularly when demonstrating long-term value.

“When it comes to renewals, if you haven’t captured the numbers that matter most to your client and what success looks like for them, then it becomes very difficult to prove your value.”

The Growth Equation Scorecard is now live

As Australia’s healthcare sector becomes increasingly competitive, digital and commercially complex, Bakker believes healthcare businesses can no longer afford to rely on instinct alone.

The challenge is not simply growing faster. It is identifying which weakness is quietly constraining growth before pressure compounds across the rest of the business.

Following the launch at Digital Health Festival, healthcare businesses can now complete The Growth Equation Scorecard, designed to help founders, clinics and healthtech companies identify where growth may be breaking down.

According to Bakker, the assessment takes less than four minutes to complete. Businesses can access the scorecard here:  https://splicemarketing.com.au/growth-equation/