How to Build a B2B Lead List for Healthtech (Buyers, Filters and Messaging)

Healthtech sells to a committee, not a person. A clinical champion wants the outcome, IT and security gate it, and finance signs.

This guide picks the committee, finds it with LeadOcean filters, sizes the list with a free count and drafts the first message per role.

TL;DR

• Target three roles per account: the clinical or operational owner who wants the tool, the IT or security lead who gates it, and the executive or finance lead who funds it.
• Size first with a free count. On 2026-10-21, US Hospitals and Health Care companies with 201 to 5,000 employees held 103,456 mailable VPs and C-level people across 4,208 employers. 6,129 of the IT directors and above were mailable.
• The recipe takes about 45 minutes and spends about 30 records, so it fits inside the Free plan's 1,000.

Prerequisites

• A LeadOcean account on the Free plan. Sign up at app.leadocean.io, no card.
• An API key exported as $LEADOCEAN_API_KEY.
• curl and jq, or any HTTP client.
• Optional: the hosted MCP server at https://api.leadocean.io/mcp if you would rather run the counts from Claude.

Step 1: Pick the buying committee

A health system purchase touches clinical, technical and financial owners. Pick the roles before you touch a filter.

Size changes the committee. A 20-person clinic has an owner who decides alone. A 1,000-person system has procurement, a security review and a long cycle.

LeadOcean has no single healthtech industry value. Providers sit under Hospitals and Health Care, with neighbours such as Medical Practices, Mental Health Care, Outpatient Care Centers and Medical Device. Vendors like you often file under Software Development. Look the exact strings up before you use them.

curl -s "https://api.leadocean.io/v1/enums/industry?limit=500" \
  -H "x-api-key: $LEADOCEAN_API_KEY" | jq -r '.data.values[]' | grep -iE "health|medical|hospital|care"

Enum values are exact strings. The same lookup is free through the MCP tool leadocean_list_enum_values.

Step 2: Turn the committee into filters

Write the filters as flat JSON. Every filter is an array, even when it holds one value.

{
  "industry": ["Hospitals and Health Care"],
  "jobLevel": ["C-Team", "VP"],
  "hqCountry": ["US"],
  "employeeRange": ["201-500", "501-1000", "1001-5000"]
}

Narrow by function when your product has one owner. A security tool sells to Information Technology. A billing tool sells to Finance & Accounting. A clinical tool sells to Healthcare & Human Services.

Run one list per role. Mixing a CISO and a nurse director into one sequence gives you a message that fits neither.

Use geography to match how you sell. On the 2026-10-21 company count, California held 548 of the 5,629 mid-size and large US providers with a mailable contact, Texas 422, New York 386 and Florida 371. Field sales teams can build one list per state. Email-only teams can keep the country in one list.

Exclude what you cannot sell to. Add excludeTitle values such as ["intern", "assistant"], and set excludeCompanyName for competitors and existing customers.

Step 3: Size the list with a free count

Count before you pull. A count costs no records and can run as often as you like.

curl -s "https://api.leadocean.io/v1/people/search?count=true" \
  -H "x-api-key: $LEADOCEAN_API_KEY" \
  -H "content-type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "industry": ["Hospitals and Health Care"],
    "jobLevel": ["C-Team", "VP"],
    "hqCountry": ["US"],
    "limit": 1
  }' | jq '.meta'

count=true goes in the query string. The JSON body rejects unknown fields. The response has no rows, only meta.total (capped at 100,000) and meta.countOnly: true. Read meta.distinctCompanies to see how many employers the people span.

For the account side, GET /v1/companies/count takes the company-search filters and returns an exact total with breakdowns by industry, headcount band, HQ country and HQ state.

Step 4: Pull a 25-row test batch

Pull a small batch first. Read the titles. If half are the wrong role, tighten the filters before you spend more.

curl -s "https://api.leadocean.io/v1/people/search" \
  -H "x-api-key: $LEADOCEAN_API_KEY" \
  -H "content-type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "industry": ["Hospitals and Health Care"],
    "jobFunction": ["Information Technology"],
    "jobLevel": ["C-Team", "VP", "Director"],
    "hqCountry": ["US"],
    "employeeRange": ["201-500", "501-1000", "1001-5000"],
    "limit": 25
  }' > batch.json

jq '.data | length' batch.json

A page of 25 is 25 records. Page with cursor from meta.nextCursor when you want more. One search pages to 10,000 rows, and the last page carries meta.depthCapped: true. Narrow the filters instead of walking further.

Each row carries an email status. Send to verified and catch_all_valid. Read the status before you send, because LeadOcean does not credit back bounces.

Step 5: Enrich the champions you will contact

Enrich only the people you will contact. Enrich takes exactly one of linkedin_url, email, phone or person_id.

curl -s -X POST "https://api.leadocean.io/v1/people/enrich" \
  -H "x-api-key: $LEADOCEAN_API_KEY" \
  -H "content-type: application/json" \
  -d '{"person_id": "PERSON_ID_FROM_SEARCH", "reveal_email": true}'

Enrich also returns career history in resume_data: past roles, education, certifications and awards, each when held. A CMIO who came from a vendor, or a director with a quality certification, gives you a better opener than a job title. An enrichment that finds nothing is a 404 and costs nothing.

For a phone number, call GET /v2/people/phone. A v2 contact call costs one record even when it finds nothing.

Step 6: Write messages that fit the buyer

Healthcare buyers answer to patient outcomes, margin and risk. Open with the problem they own this quarter.

Keep claims you can prove. Do not cite a customer or a result you cannot show. Do not promise compliance status in a cold email.

Sequence by role, not by account. Send the clinical lead a note about the workflow. Send IT a note about integration. When one replies, you can name the others at the account.

Keep it to three lines: one on their situation, one on what you do, one question.

Subject: Prior auth backlog at Acme Health

Jane, how many staff hours at Acme Health go to prior
authorization follow-up? We automate the status checks.
Worth a short look, or is this not on your list this quarter?

The names above are placeholders. Replace them with the fields from your batch.

Step 7: Export the full list

When the test batch reads right, export the rest. Bulk CSV export is not on Free; it comes with Solo at $97 a month and with Agency at $497 a month. On Free, page the search endpoint inside your 1,000 records.

curl -s -X POST "https://api.leadocean.io/v1/exports" \
  -H "x-api-key: $LEADOCEAN_API_KEY" \
  -H "content-type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "name": "US health systems, IT leaders",
    "filters": {
      "industry": ["Hospitals and Health Care"],
      "jobFunction": ["Information Technology"],
      "jobLevel": ["C-Team", "VP", "Director"],
      "hqCountry": ["US"],
      "employeeRange": ["201-500", "501-1000", "1001-5000"]
    },
    "limit": 6129
  }'

The filters go inside filters and the row count in limit. Every exported row costs one record. An export takes up to 50,000 rows a request and 500,000 a day. The app at app.leadocean.io has an Exports page with a filter builder, a column picker and the record price before you start.

What you get

These are free company counts from the LeadOcean MCP tool leadocean_count_companies on 2026-10-21. They count US-headquartered companies with at least one mailable contact (hasMailableContacts true).

Small practices dominate: 26,499 of the 65,478 have 1 to 10 employees. Start at 201 employees and up if your committee needs separate IT and finance roles.

Read the label with care. The largest NAICS code inside Hospitals and Health Care is 621111, offices of physicians, with 29,500 of the 65,478 companies. General hospitals (622110) are 947. If you sell to hospitals only, check the first 25 company names, or count with naicsPrimary on the company side.

The people counts below come from leadocean_count_leads on the same date. US HQ, 201 to 5,000 employees, default mailable counting (verified, catch_all_valid or catch_all).

The first total is above 100,000, so the REST meta.total would show the 100,000 cap for it. The MCP count returned the exact number. Of the 103,456, 64,017 are filed as C-suite, 20,673 as VP and 18,766 as owner. C-suite titles are common in health systems (chief nursing officer, chief medical officer), so add jobFunction before you treat the list as budget owners. The IT row is the list for a security or integration product: about four mailable IT leaders per employer. The finance row is the list for revenue cycle and billing tools. It reaches more employers (2,363) than the IT row, so a billing product has the wider first list. A product that needs both an IT and a finance sign-off is limited by the smaller of the two.

The shape of one search row follows (response shape from the API reference, placeholder values).

{
  "success": true,
  "data": [
    {
      "profile_data": {
        "profile_full_name": "Jane Doe",
        "profile_headline": "Chief Information Officer at Acme Health"
      },
      "contact_data": {
        "has_email": true,
        "has_phone": false,
        "email_status": "verified",
        "contact_current_experiences": [
          { "company_name": "Acme Health", "company_domain": "acme.com", "job_title": "Chief Information Officer" }
        ]
      },
      "meta": { "source_ids": { "person_id": "PERSON_ID" } }
    }
  ],
  "meta": { "nextCursor": "CURSOR", "depthCapped": false }
}

Troubleshooting

FAQ