Why we exist
Most healthcare-software reviews online are either thinly disguised affiliate landing pages or vendor-sponsored "top 10" lists that rotate based on who paid for placement that month. The result: practitioners pick the wrong tools, lose hours per week to bad workflows, and burn through 30-day trials trying to figure out what's actually different between platforms.
HTO was built to fix that. We test platforms for at least 90 days, document the workflow in writing, score the same dimensions across every product, and publish the comparison methodology so you can check our work. Sponsorships and affiliate income exist — we disclose them on every page — but they never alter our rankings. If our #1 platform pulls its affiliate program tomorrow, it stays #1.
How we test
Every reviewed platform goes through the same protocol. We sign up as a paying customer (no free press accounts), onboard a simulated solo practice, and run a fixed set of weekly workflows — schedule a session, collect intake, run telehealth, generate a SOAP note, send a superbill, handle a no-show, refund a payment, run a group session, and export the data. Then we time each task, score the friction, and write what we'd actually tell a colleague.
The full scoring rubric lives on our methodology page. The short version: we score six dimensions (ease of use, feature depth, pricing value, support, integrations, compliance) and we never publish a final score until at least two reviewers have hit the same number independently.
How we make money
Two ways: affiliate referrals on a small number of platforms we already independently recommend, and sponsored placements that are visually distinct, labeled, and don't appear in our editorial rankings. We don't accept paid review placements, paid score adjustments, or product gifting in exchange for coverage.
Roughly: ~70% of revenue comes from affiliate commissions, ~25% from sponsor placements in clearly-labeled sponsor zones, and ~5% from newsletter sponsorships. Total advertiser influence on rankings: zero. If a vendor we cover pulls their affiliate program, the review stays exactly as written — we'll just remove the affiliate link.
Our full affiliate disclosure policy spells this out in detail.
Editorial network
HTO is part of a small editorial network of independent U.S. publications: Be Healthy Tulare (community health journalism, Central Valley) and Charleston Tribune (local civic reporting, South Carolina). Each publication is editorially independent — we share infrastructure and occasional cross-coverage, not editorial control.
Contact us
Editorial: editorial@healthcaretechnologyonline.com
Sponsorships and media kit: sponsor page
Tips and corrections: tips@healthcaretechnologyonline.com
We respond to all editorial and correction inquiries within 48 business hours. If a published review contains a factual error, we'll correct it, mark the correction inline, and timestamp it.