Clinical Champion
Also known as: Physician Champion, Internal Sponsor
The clinician inside the organization who advocates for a purchase, assembles the internal case for it, and carries it through committee review.
Nearly every successful clinical technology purchase has a clinical champion. This is the physician, nurse leader, pharmacist, or informaticist who believes the product solves a real problem and is willing to spend internal credibility to get it approved.
The champion writes or drives the submission, answers committee questions, recruits colleagues, and absorbs the political cost if the purchase disappoints. Vendors do not get to appoint one. Champions volunteer, and they volunteer for problems they personally experience.
Champion-dependence is also a risk the buying organization knows about. A committee that senses a purchase rests entirely on one enthusiastic individual will often ask what happens when that person leaves, and a purchase with only one supporter is easier to defer than one with four.
This is why the people researching a product and the people approving it are usually different, and why content aimed only at the enthusiast misses most of the decision. See who approves clinical AI in a hospital.