AI vendor evaluation toolkit

The Independent Clinic's Guide to Evaluating AI Vendors

A practical 6-domain framework built for independent practices to score vendor pitches, uncover hidden volume costs, and protect their budget.

This is a new, independently-built toolkit — not an institutional standard, not funded by any vendor. It gets sharper as clinics use it and tell us what's missing.

Download Free PDF
The Hard Truth

Digital medicine has a name for this failure: “Pilotitis” — the chronic structural breakdown of health technology when it hits real-world workflows. Peer-reviewed research shows that the vast majority of digital health pilots fail to scale past the initial testing phase due to poor data integration, hidden operational costs, or staff resistance. This toolkit is designed to protect your clinic's budget before you sign a binding contract.*

Relevant sources and references

Adoption & industry landscape

  1. Doximity — 2026 State of AI in Medicine Report
  2. Eliciting Insights — 2026 industry survey
  3. JMIR — global cross-sectional survey on AI adoption
  4. Precedence Research — global AI healthcare market sizing ($37B → $51B → $600B+ by 2034)
  5. HFMA & Eliciting Insights — Health system adoption of AI outpaces internal governance and strategy, Aug 2025

Why pilots fail to scale (“Pilotitis”)

  1. Egermark et al. — Overcoming Pilotitis in Digital Medicine at the Intersection of Data, Clinical Evidence, and Adoption, Advanced Intelligent Systems (Wiley), 2022
  2. From pilot to policy: why AI health interventions fail to scale in developing countries, Frontiers in Digital Health, 2026
  3. Barriers to digital health implementation in low- and middle-income countries: a narrative review, Discover Public Health (Springer), 2026
  4. iCHECK-DH Guidelines — Reporting Digital Health Implementations, JMIR, 2023

Human factors & integration

  1. Sujan, Furniss, Grundy et al. — Human factors challenges for the safe use of artificial intelligence in patient care, BMJ Health & Care Informatics, 2019
  2. Addressing the challenges of integrating digital health technologies to measure patient-centred outcomes in clinical registries, The Lancet Digital Health, 2024

Governance & procurement risk

  1. World Health Organization — Global Strategy on Digital Health 2020–2025
  2. Gartner — Gartner Predicts 30% of Generative AI Projects Will Be Abandoned After Proof of Concept By End of 2025, July 2024
Score: 2
Red Flag
Phase 1 → 4

What's Inside the Toolkit

6 Due Diligence Domains

  • Clinical evidence
  • Data compliance
  • Implementation
  • Pricing
  • Stability
  • Usability

The Vendor Scorecard

Rate vendor answers from 0 to 2 to get an objective, data-driven score before signing.

The “Red Flags” Decoder

8 common phrases vendors use to hide data risks, missing evidence, or messy rollouts.

The 4-Phase Adoption Roadmap

Your step-by-step plan from contract signing through the first 90 days and ongoing audits.

The questions we often hear from clinics

This toolkit is built to help you answer them

Who this Toolkit is for

Addresses the risks your whole team cares about

Operational efficiency and how fast this pays off. Pricing transparency and vendor financial stability are built for this call.

Whether the tool holds up in daily use, not on a spec sheet. Clinical fit is scored the way you'd actually judge it.

Worth reading the vendor questions for a better view of practical usage and your efficiency boost.

Implementation & compatibility aspects highlighted.

Frequently Asked Questions

Large healthcare systems have compliance committees and legal teams to vet vendors. Independent practices usually have one owner making high-stakes choices alone. This toolkit gives you institutional-grade due diligence scaled down to a single conversation.

No. This framework is part of Voxwise's independent research into how private practices adopt technology. We do not accept commissions, affiliate fees, or sponsorships from software providers.

The questions are structured to be asked during your initial 30-minute demo call or sent via email. Scoring the vendor takes less than 5 minutes.

Yes. The 6 domains are diagnostic-agnostic. Whether you are evaluating AI for dental X-ray analysis, automated medical scribing, billing optimization, or ophthalmic imaging, the underlying financial, legal, and operational risks remain identical.

Yes, that is exactly what it is for. If a vendor scores poorly in “Pricing Transparency” or “Data & Compliance,” you have concrete leverage to demand that vague verbal promises about volume scaling, exit clauses, or data ownership be put explicitly into the written contract before you sign.

No. If you are in a trial phase, look directly at the “Phase 2 & 3” sections of the Adoption Roadmap. You can use the scorecard retrospectively to evaluate the vendor's actual support performance and compliance behavior before the trial converts into a binding contract.

Get the toolkit

Turn sales pitches into verifiable data

Fill in the form, get the PDF instantly.

  1. 1 Download the toolkit as a PDF
  2. 2 A short email sequence follows, including the ROI calculator
  3. 3 Use the scorecard on your next vendor call