Two in three healthcare software buyers take three to six months to research and select new software, and 92% start by building a shortlist of vendors, usually three to five names, according to Gartner Digital Markets' survey of 431 healthcare and medical buyers. Six in ten of them end up choosing from that first list most of the time, so the website has to earn its place on the list before anyone in sales hears a name.
This page collects the buyer journey numbers that are specific to healthcare: research time, the sources healthcare buyers trust, how far they will go without a rep, how AI search changes the first step, and how often the journey repeats. It ends with our read of 20 healthcare vendor sites and a five-page test order. Where a figure comes from a general B2B survey, it is labelled as a proxy.
Which numbers are healthcare data and which are proxies
Two healthcare buyer surveys are worth using, both with caveats. Gartner Digital Markets sells reviews, leads and intent data to software vendors, and its healthcare article dates from November 2023, on fieldwork from July 2023. The HIMSS 2025 Healthcare IT Buyer Survey is gated, so its figures come from Health Launchpad's March 2025 summary.
The large B2B studies barely include healthcare: it was 3% of 6sense's 2025 sample of nearly 4,000 buyers, with no separate results. Use them for direction, not targets.
For the general B2B figures, see our post B2B SaaS Buyer Journey Statistics 2026. For healthcare buying committees and the EHR question on demo forms, see Healthcare B2B Demo Request and Lead Form Statistics 2026.
Research time: three to six months for software, longer for health systems
| Measure | Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Healthcare buyers taking 3 to 6 months to select software | 67% | Gartner Digital Markets, 431 buyers, 2023 |
| Regret risk | Rises when selection takes more than 3 months | Gartner Digital Markets, 2023 |
| Evaluation time, buyers who later regretted the purchase | 5 months on average | Software Advice, 364 providers, 2025 |
| Evaluation time, satisfied buyers | 3.7 months on average | Software Advice, 2025 |
| Successful buyers who finished in 3 months or less | 64% | Software Advice, 2025 |
| Health IT buying cycles completed within a year | About two-thirds; 13% take two years or more | HIMSS 2025, 211 respondents |
| First supplier contact, all B2B, proxy | 61% of the journey, about 27 weeks in | 6sense, nearly 4,000 buyers, 2025 |
Sources: Gartner Digital Markets, 2023; Software Advice, 2025; HIMSS via Health Launchpad, 2025; 6sense, 2025
Two separate surveys, both from software referral businesses, find the same pattern: healthcare buyers who take longer to choose are more likely to regret it. That is a correlation; a long evaluation may be a symptom of poor fit. For a website it still points one way: every question answered early is one fewer reason for a stalled evaluation.
Where healthcare buyers look before they call
Healthcare buyers lean on peers more than most. HIMSS asked which sources health IT buyers trust and which channels they use, and Gartner Digital Markets asked which sources build the first shortlist.
| Source | Figure | Measure and source |
|---|---|---|
| Industry peers and networks | 74% | Rated extremely or very trustworthy, HIMSS 2025 |
| Professional associations | 71% | Rated extremely or very trustworthy, HIMSS 2025 |
| In-person events | 67% | Rated extremely or very trustworthy, HIMSS 2025 |
| Industry websites | 61% | Used as a research channel, HIMSS 2025 |
| Vendor websites | 60% | Used as a research channel, HIMSS 2025 |
| Customer reviews | 36% | Used to build the shortlist, Gartner Digital Markets |
| Product trials | 32% | Used to build the shortlist, Gartner Digital Markets |
| Consultations with industry experts | 30% | Used to build the shortlist, Gartner Digital Markets |
| Product demonstration | 29% | Used to build the shortlist, Gartner Digital Markets |
Sources: HIMSS 2025 Healthcare IT Buyer Survey via Health Launchpad; Gartner Digital Markets, 2023
The measures differ, so do not rank across them. Together they say buyers go to the website while trusting peers. Healthcare also has its own review channel. KLAS Research says 95% of its surveys are collected by a researcher in an in-depth phone interview, and it lists more than 20,000 participating provider memberships.
What buyers want from the content. 78% of HIMSS respondents called product demos important when researching vendors, and 56% said the same of case studies and white papers. 83% had acted on useful content in the past six months: 51% registered for gated content, 48% researched the vendor further and 45% shared it with colleagues.
The business case is written from your pages. 26% include case study content in the internal documents used to justify a purchase. A case study with a named organisation, a baseline and a measured result is raw material for that document. A quote with no numbers is not.
Self-serve preference: research alone, then a security review
The general B2B figures on going without a rep keep rising. Gartner found 61% of 632 buyers preferred a rep-free experience in fieldwork from August to September 2024, and 67% of 646 buyers a year later. In the earlier survey, 73% avoided suppliers whose outreach felt irrelevant and 69% reported inconsistencies between a supplier's website and what its sellers said. Forrester's 2026 survey of nearly 18,000 buyers counts 13 internal stakeholders and nine external participants in the average decision, with procurement a decision-maker 53% of the time.
Healthcare adds a step those surveys do not isolate. 45% of providers name data security as the biggest barrier to adopting new software (Software Advice, 2025), and IT security was healthcare's top software investment priority in Gartner Digital Markets' data. A buyer can shortlist alone; the security reviewer still needs written answers that match the seller's.
AI search: the first answer is often not your page
| Measure | Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Health care Google queries showing an AI Overview | 48.7%, highest of 10 industries | Conductor, Sept to Oct 2025 |
| Health care equipment and services queries showing one | 49.2% | Conductor |
| AI referrals as a share of health care site traffic | 0.64% | Conductor, May to Sept 2025 |
| ChatGPT's share of health care AI referrals | 83.8% | Conductor |
| Software buyers starting research in an AI chatbot more often than Google | 51%, up from 29% | G2, 1,076 buyers, March 2026 |
| Buyers who chose a vendor they had not planned to because a chatbot named it | 69% | G2, March 2026 |
| Buyers who used AI and fact-check its answers | 94% | TrustRadius, 1,862 buyers, January 2026 |
Sources: Conductor, 2026; G2, 2026; TrustRadius, 2026. G2 and TrustRadius sell to software vendors.
Health care queries see AI summaries more than any other industry in Conductor's data, yet AI tools send under 1% of health care site traffic: the answer is read where it appears. Conductor's most cited health care domains are consumer sites such as mayoclinic.org, so a B2B vendor gets named through pages that say plainly who the product is for, which systems it works with and how it compares.
TrustRadius adds two website figures: 83% of buyers shortlisted three products or fewer, and transparent pricing has topped their wish list for vendors four years running.
The journey repeats: short contracts and annual reviews
The Peterson Health Technology Institute surveyed 309 health plan, health system and employer decision-makers with NORC at the University of Chicago in August 2025. 73% of digital health contracts last two years or less, more than half of purchasers review their offerings every year, and nearly half already use performance-based contracts. Health plans and health systems choose on a vendor's track record; employers choose on cost.
For a vendor, the renewal is a second buyer journey: the committee that bought looks again within two years, asking for outcomes. Results pages and updated case studies serve renewal as much as acquisition.
What 20 healthcare vendor sites give the buyer who researches alone
We read the sitemaps, homepages, pricing pages and the relevant pages of 20 healthcare software vendors on 21 October 2026: ten that sell mainly to independent practices and ten that sell mainly to health systems and large organisations. athenahealth returned an access-denied page to every request, so we replaced it with Qventus.
| Touchpoint | Practice software, of 10 | Health system software, of 10 | All 20 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Prices on the pricing page | 6 | 1 | 7 |
| Self-serve free trial or free sign-up | 3 | 1 | 4 |
| Security, trust centre or HIPAA page | 8 | 7 | 15 |
| Competitor comparison or alternative page | 7 | 2 | 9 |
| ROI or value calculator | 3 | 3 | 6 |
| Product tour or recorded demo page | 5 | 2 | 7 |
| Four or more customer story pages | 9 | 9 | 18 |
Source: Octo Agency read of each vendor's sitemap and pages, 21 October 2026. Practice software: Tebra, SimplePractice, DrChrono, Elation Health, Healthie, Weave, NexHealth, Spruce Health, Jane, Canvas Medical. Health system software: Phreesia, Luma Health, Abridge, Suki, Ambience Healthcare, Nabla, Waystar, Notable, Redox, Qventus.
Price splits the market. SimplePractice, Healthie, Weave, Spruce Health, Jane and Canvas Medical publish prices; Redox is the only health system vendor that does, with starting prices for its integration plans. The other 13 publish no price, while buyers rank transparent pricing first on their wish list.
Trials are rare. Only SimplePractice, Healthie, Spruce Health and Nabla let a buyer start without a meeting, against the 32% of healthcare buyers who use trials to build their shortlist.
Case studies are everywhere, demos are not. 18 of 20 publish four or more customer stories. Only seven have a product tour or recorded demo page, and Tebra's tour sits behind a form. Notable lists demo videos whose pages are password protected, so we did not count it.
Security pages have gaps in odd places. Elation Health, Canvas Medical, Phreesia, Abridge and Waystar had no dedicated security or trust page we could reach; Phreesia and Canvas cover security as a section of another page.
What this means for a Healthcare B2B site: a five-page test order
A healthcare site has to get onto a shortlist built from reviews, peers and AI answers, then survive a security review and a business case written without the vendor in the room. We build marketing sites in Webflow, which is our bias. This is the order we would test in on a healthcare account.
1. A security and HIPAA page written for IT. Data security is the barrier 45% of providers name first. Put certifications, hosting, the business associate agreement and a questionnaire contact on one page, and measure how often sales is asked for the same material.
2. Case studies built for the business case. 26% of buyers copy case study content into internal documents. Lead each story with the organisation type, the baseline and the measured result, and test a one-page PDF version.
3. A recorded demo or product tour, ungated. 78% of HIMSS respondents value demos, and 13 of the 20 vendors we read have no product tour or recorded demo page. Compare demo-request quality before and after.
4. A pricing model page. Practice software can publish prices; health system software can publish how pricing works, what drives it and a worked example. Measure qualified demo requests from the page.
5. A comparison page for the default choice. For most buyers the default is the EHR vendor's own module or the incumbent. One honest comparison table gives AI assistants and buyers the same answer your sellers give.
Our marketing website service explains how we would scope a healthcare B2B site around this journey, with tracking to measure each page.
