The AI market is crowded with promises: major players across industries are dominating headlines with bold claims and polished messaging. But in my 25-plus years of experience in the healthtech sector, I’ve seen time and time again that the products customers tend to stick with are those presented transparently, honestly and without surprises.

When we began building our own AI-powered solution (an ambient listening and note-taking tool designed to help providers reclaim their time), we knew we couldn’t compete based on bold claims. We focused on telling the truth instead. How do you actually use the tool? How will it change your day-to-day experience when you start work in the morning?

This meant being transparent about our tool’s capabilities, limitations and pricing. An approach that’s becoming less and less common in the health IT industry. We took that route because our goal was to build lasting trust in a product that our current and future customers truly need. And that didn’t just make us stand out. It made customers lean in closer.

Clarity is the fastest way to build trust

The current conversation around AI is saturated and often abstract, which means it can be a challenge for practice decision-makers to translate buzz into a practical strategy. Recent reports show that more than half of healthcare organizations still don’t have a clear AI strategy, and only about 30% of pilot programs reach full implementation. That gap often starts with unclear expectations; if teams don’t see the promised benefits, they’ll move on quickly.

In software and tech, setting clear expectations is one of the most overlooked parts of product design. For the healthtech industry in particular, the urgency to create clarity is even more essential. Most physicians are burnt out and dealing with incredible challenges, and while they might be an extreme compared to other industries, they’re also a clear illustration of just how little time and attention the average buyer has to offer today.

That’s why so many companies take a “bigger is better” approach to communication about their products, hoping flashy ad copy and unscrupulous promises will cut through the noise and catch customers’ attention.

In my experience, a more direct approach is the one that really builds trust, not just getting someone through the door, but keeping them coming back through service and customer experience. In our case, we made an early decision to speak plainly about what our AI tool is made to do, the tasks it can handle and just as importantly, what it can’t. That level of clarity wasn’t about underselling the product. It was about building confidence. And it worked in ways that even surprised us.

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Empathy is the best foundation for product decisions

Running a healthcare technology company for nearly three decades has given me an empathy-driven approach to creating and selling products. And the more time I spend around clinicians, the more I see where tools really help and where they quietly add burden. That experience shaped every decision we made when venturing into our first AI-powered product.

Rather than chase trends, we built around patterns we had already seen. Clinical note-taking isn’t just an annoying task. It’s often the most burdensome administrative hurdle for providers. We made early development decisions by observing how providers moved through their day. What slowed them down. What actually got used. Rather than what looked the shiniest and most appealing on a list of product features.

We also brought frontline users into the process early, whose feedback allowed us to course-correct, optimize and build something genuinely worthwhile. That translated into a product that didn’t need gimmicks to sell, healthcare providers could see the value at one glance.

One of the most clear examples of this came from Dr. James Brewer, M.D., who’d spent years relying on paper charts alone because he feared a typical EHR would only add time to his workflow.

“Having an e-scribe was the only way I was willing to make that transition,” he explained. “[This technology] will only get better and better as it learns how I practice and chart, and I am confident that I will be using it for many years to come.”

Other customers saw immediate, measurable improvements in their workload. For one user, documentation time decreased by 70%. That meant 12+ hours per week spent working on notes after hours disappeared overnight, providing more time to focus on rest, fun and family, the things every human ultimately wants to focus on. Those results aren’t marketing claims or projections; they’re the direct outcome of building a tool around real workflows, real pain points and real customer needs.

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Why we will always choose trust and service over hype

We don’t aim to match the vast resources of the largest AI giants in our vertical. As a bootstrapped team, our goal is not to outspend the competition but to out-trust and out-service them, and we do it by prioritizing transparency and empathy. That focus has allowed us to build a competitive ambient AI solution that stands on merit first and marketing second.

This approach relies on a fundamental belief that clarity matters more than cleverness, and service more than hype. We delivered a tool that genuinely supports our customers, rather than simply adding to the noise. That’s not just helping us sell one exciting new product, but building long-term trust in our entire suite of medical practice software.

As AI is integrated more deeply into the healthcare system, the industry’s most significant test will not be technical capability, but ethical restraint. The pressure to oversell is immense, but we believe that when the dust settles, the only thing that will matter is who stays honest and provides real value to the people who use their product every day.