Five frameworks.
One structured journey.
The GAITS frameworks were developed from direct experience supporting healthcare innovators. Used in sequence, they provide a structured path from understanding a clinical need through to building a fundable innovation.
How they work together
Start with where you are. Then address what matters most at that stage.
Healthcare innovation requires teams to advance simultaneously on multiple fronts — clinical, regulatory, commercial, and technical. The five GAITS frameworks address the most critical challenges teams face as they move through the innovation journey.
The Healthcare Innovation Cycle is the foundation: it defines the 10 stages every healthcare innovation must navigate, across all solution types. The remaining four frameworks are each applied at a specific point in that journey — generating the stakeholder insights needed to define the problem, choosing the market to win, building and testing the business model, and demonstrating what funders will require when the time comes to raise capital. They can be used independently, but are most powerful when used in sequence.
The five frameworks
In sequence, from foundation to funding.
A 10-stage framework developed from CIMIT's 20+ years of experience with healthcare innovators. It defines the clinical, regulatory, commercial, and technical milestones every innovation must reach — across all solution types, from MedTech to Digital Health to Therapeutics. The HIC is the common language of the GAITS platform.
Explore the Cycle →Before anything else, teams need valid data from the right stakeholders. The Stakeholder Interviewing Rules are a 12-rule methodology for conducting exploratory interviews that generate unbiased discovery insights — the foundation for a credible need statement, a realistic value proposition, and a defensible business model.
Explore the Rules →Investors reject a top-down share of a big market. This framework names two markets and sizes them from the bottom up: the target market you build the company to win, and the beachhead you win first. Ten criteria in the four GAITS domains guide the beachhead choice, and two growth paths show the lower-risk route from one to the other.
Explore the Framework →Healthcare markets are complex and multi-sided. The Healthcare Business Model Canvas structures 18 blocks across 8 rows — from the unmet need through customers, value, influencers, and revenue model, to core operations, go-to-market, and financial outputs — organised into Market & Adoption, Operating Model, and Financial Model sections.
Explore the H-BMC →