Rethinking customer engagement in diagnostics: Are manufacturers prepared?

To keep pace, diagnostics manufacturers should redesign customer engagement around the full diagnostic journey—from test selection and ordering to interpretation, follow-up, and ongoing consumer engagement. That means engaging a broader set of provider stakeholders, strengthening workflow and data integration through platform-based models, and building AI capabilities that support a more connected customer experience.

The second disconnect is with whom manufacturers engage (figure 3). Surveyed manufacturers said their key contacts are hospital procurement offices and channel partners, or the formal buyers who sign contracts. Providers, however, said the people who most influence what gets ordered, when, and for whom are ordering clinicians, lab directors, and service-line leaders. The risk is that manufacturers may be building relationships with those who approve purchases while underinvesting in the stakeholders who shape adoption, utilization, clinical value, and future needs.

The third disconnect is how providers want to engage. Providers prioritized peer-to-peer exchange and education, including conferences, clinical forums, and conversations with colleagues who have hands-on product experience. Several provider interviewees also said they wanted better websites where they could research products on their own, without going through a sales call. Manufacturers, by contrast, emphasized field sales and application scientists. While provider interviewees saw value in application scientists, especially for complex products, several described field sales outreach as too frequent and not always valuable.

Together, these disconnects suggest that many manufacturers still organize customer engagement around account coverage and purchasing, while providers are looking for workflow support, clinical education, service responsiveness, and digital self-service. That may require manufacturers to engage less like product vendors and more like partners helping providers solve operational and clinical challenges. Based on our interviews, this may look like risk-sharing, genuine responsiveness to service issues, and collaborating on solving thorny issues like reducing length of stay.

Closing these provider engagement gaps is an immediate priority. It’s also the foundation for the next challenge: helping providers meet the expectations of consumers, who are gaining more influence over what tests are ordered, how they want to see results presented, and where follow-up takes place.⁴

As more testing moves into the home, retail settings, and digital platforms, providers are becoming part of a more distributed care model.⁶ Consumers increasingly expect convenient access, transparent and predictable experiences, personalized interactions, and results they can understand and act on.⁷ A recent survey of 1,000 US-based patients by a diagnostics manufacturer found that 93% of respondents expect their doctor to order a lab test upon request, while 27% pursue testing without a doctor’s recommendation.⁸ That means a meaningful share of consumers already appear to be making decisions around diagnostic testing outside the traditional health care system. Nontraditional players such as digital health startups, direct-to-consumer testing companies, and wearable technology makers (for example, LetsGetChecked, Everlywell, Oura, and Ultrahuman) are responding with streamlined access, intuitive interfaces, and clearer, more actionable outputs.⁹

But consumerization doesn’t necessarily mean providers will be replaced. According to our interviews, many consumer-facing entrants are collaborating with health care organizations, employers, health plans, and testing service providers, and securing coverage through health savings accounts or flexible spending accounts.¹⁰ Two government initiatives—the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Innovation Center’s Advancing Chronic Care with Effective, Scalable Solutions Model and the Food and Drug Administration’s Technology-Enabled Meaningful Patient Outcomes for Digital Health Devices Pilot—may also drive collaboration between providers and new and existing diagnostic companies. Consumers also continue to look to clinicians for interpretation and follow-up. In Deloitte’s 2025 US Health Care Consumer Survey, 62% of respondents who track their health data said they share it with a health care provider. In the survey commissioned by a diagnostics manufacturer, 94% of respondents said they’re more likely to follow a doctor’s recommendation when it’s supported by test results.¹¹

For diagnostics manufacturers, that is the B2B2C opportunity: helping provider customers deliver the kind of diagnostic experience consumers increasingly expect.

Over time, these capabilities begin to form the foundation of a broader platform model where AI is not deployed as a standalone tool, but embedded across interconnected workflows, continuously learning from longitudinal data and influencing decisions across the care continuum.

Emerging examples illustrate how these capabilities are being applied and point toward an emerging platform-based model for diagnostics. Collaborations between diagnostics companies and EHR providers¹³ are improving ordering and results workflows. Some integrated solutions embed AI into lab and pathology operations.¹⁴ Consumer-facing companies are delivering app-based results with more actionable insights. While these examples may appear discrete, they represent early building blocks of a more connected ecosystem where workflow integration, data aggregation, and consumer engagement increasingly operate as part of a unified platform rather than as separate capabilities.

Personalization becomes a differentiator

As the consumer-directed diagnostics market moves beyond well-being into screening, prevention, and diagnosis, personalization will likely become even more important. This can include individual test recommendations, preparation guidance, clearer result explanations, follow-up nudges, provider routing, and longitudinal context.

Manufacturers and providers in our survey both recognized the importance of personalized test recommendations, though manufacturers (94%) placed even greater emphasis on them than providers did (82%). As one interviewee noted, “A lot of people don’t get the tests they should,” in part because of the limited time they have with their doctor. This customization is likely to become more important to consumers as innovation in diagnostics continues to grow.

Nearly all survey respondents also agreed that personalized consumer communication matters. But one interviewee put the challenge plainly, “Everyone in health care has to learn to talk to patients better.”

Consumer-facing startups and wearable technology companies offer a glimpse of what better personalization can look like. According to our interviews, they have built interfaces people want to use: Results are displayed visually, contextualized over time, and translated into clear next steps. Is this value in range or out of range? Better or worse than last week? What does it mean? Users likely check these interfaces when they wake up, throughout the day, and before bed. The experience tends to move beyond simply delivering data to helping people understand the data and what to do next. A few of the wearable tech executives we interviewed noted that consumers continue using their products even when they could get the same services at a lower cost through the traditional health care system, demonstrating the value that consumers see in them.

According to some of the leaders we interviewed, when done well, this kind of personalization can reinforce, rather than replace, the role of providers by directing consumers back into care when appropriate through either partnerships or vertical integration.

That’s an opportunity for diagnostics manufacturers: to go beyond efforts to improve testing by helping providers deliver a diagnostics experience that is more connected, understandable, and actionable. Manufacturers that do this well may help providers build a level of consumer trust that’s difficult for competitors to replicate.

Our research suggests that manufacturers should focus transformation efforts in three areas:

1. Redesigning the service model: Manufacturers have an opportunity to go beyond the instrument and expand into software and services. Coupled with AI, manufacturers can redesign provider workflows to make test ordering simpler, more integrated, and easier to navigate. That could include smart ordering, automated prior authorization integration, better fit within EHR workflows, greater specimen logistics visibility, next-best-action routing, and fewer manual handoffs. Additionally, manufacturers should build the data, workflow, platform integration, and governance infrastructure needed for a more AI-driven, consumer-focused future. As these capabilities scale, they begin to reshape how diagnostics manufacturers create and capture value, shifting from one-time test transactions toward models that reward longitudinal insight, workflow integration, and influence over clinical and consumer decision-making. In many cases, that will involve new partnerships across the ecosystem, including with nontraditional players.
2. Elevating consumer experience: Manufacturers should aim to improve the diagnostics experience—and perhaps even reimagine it around convenience, clarity, and personalization. Investment in integrated diagnostics platforms that include a focus on interoperability, AI, software, and services may be underlying requirements for this reimagination. Manufacturers that integrate data from wearable devices and personalize the journey—from onboarding and preparation through results explanation, interpretation, and follow-up—may be better positioned to build trust with both providers and consumers. In established relationships, the priority may be to strengthen existing trust. In newer markets, trust will likely need to be earned deliberately and protected carefully. Partnerships may also help manufacturers extend credibility and improve the consumer experience.
3. Reshaping sales operations: Diagnostics manufacturers should reassess how they identify and engage stakeholders across the diagnostic journey, including ordering clinicians, lab directors, and service-line leaders. The goal should be to understand who makes decisions, who shapes demand, and who enables fulfillment, and then build the engagement model accordingly. Depending on the strategy, procurement may not be the right starting point. This shift could reshape field application scientist coverage, medical affairs support, training, peer education, and digital self-service. AI may also help improve the efficiency and effectiveness of these activities.