Who it's for

The R&D tax credit for healthtech companies

Healthtech companies build genuinely hard software: clinical decision support, telehealth platforms, interoperability between systems that were never meant to talk, patient-data infrastructure under strict constraints. That engineering is technical and uncertain, which makes it a strong fit for the R&D credit. And because the credit is about the development work, not the patient data, you can document it without exposing anything sensitive.

By the R&D Binder Editorial Research Team. Last reviewed June 7, 2026.

Estimate my credit See a sample binder

Why healthtech development qualifies

The hard problems are in the software, and they are real.

Building clinical decision support, integrating incompatible health systems, or making a telehealth platform reliable at scale means resolving technical uncertainty in computer science and engineering. The four-part test is usually met by the core development.

The work is experimental in the ordinary sense: approaches tried and discarded, integrations that fail before they succeed, and performance and reliability tuned against hard requirements.

Qualifying without touching patient data

The credit is about engineering, not records.

The R&D credit rewards the development of the software, measured by engineering effort and cost. It does not require, and does not care about, the patient data the software processes.

R&D Binder documents the credit from GitHub commit metadata, not from any clinical or patient records. Healthtech companies should not, and do not need to, upload PHI for the binder.

One nuance: internal versus product

Some health software is internal-use, which raises the bar.

Software a health company builds mainly to run its own operations is internal-use software, which has to clear a higher three-part test. A patient-facing product or a sold platform is not internal-use; an internal claims or scheduling system might be.

It is not disqualifying, but it changes the documentation. R&D Binder flags internal-use components and documents the higher threshold where it applies.

The tests a healthtech claim runs through:

Sources

Every claim on this page traces to a primary authority. Each source below is independent and verifiable.

26 U.S.C. § 41, credit for increasing research activities - Cornell Law School, Legal Information Institute
Treas. Reg. § 1.41-4, qualified research and the four-part test - Cornell Law School, Legal Information Institute
IRS, Instructions for Form 6765 - Internal Revenue Service

Get documentation built to survive an exam

R&D Binder works from commit metadata, not patient records, so a healthtech company can document its credit without putting PHI anywhere near the process. Your CPA files it.

Estimate your credit See the sample binder