So today, let’s talk about great technologies and awesome
concepts. As a pre-writing disclaimer... I like these companies / technologies
because they are great ideas but I am in no way, as of the date of this posting,
affiliated with any of them.
Since the last few posts were about EMR, I will start with a
great EMR concept called Hello Health. I have said before I have worked in EMR
before, but I did not work for this company… although, I have admired Hello Health quite a bit for quite some time.
Hello Health gives patients a better way to interact with their doctors. It has
the elements of a traditional EMR (patient records, e-prescribing, etc) but
also lets patients subscribe to features that improve patient-physician interaction.
These features include the ability to securely email your doctor and “go to the
doctor” using instant messaging and video conferencing.
The Hello Health business model is genius! Hello Health partners
with the doctor’s practice to improve the doctor’s business thereby improving
Hello Health’s business. This kind of upstream marketing is brilliant.
Unfortunately, few companies understand the value of upstream marketing. The
concept is simple. You sell a product to another business (a retailer, for
example) who in turn sells the product to a consumer. If you want to make your product sell, you help the the retailer sell to the consumer. The more
the customer buys from the retailer, the more the retailer buys from you. Hello Health understands that and everyone benefits.
For physicians, Hello Health offers additional revenue by
charging patients a subscription to have internet access to their doctor. Years
ago, I worked in a physician’s practice and I can tell you from experience that
many patients abuse the telephone and thereby the doctors time. Doctors do not
get paid to return phone calls. Time on the phone results in lost revenue. In the Hello Health model,
patients pay a subscription fee to have secure internet access to their doctor.
For patients, Hello Health offers pure convenience! As a patient, I would gladly pay a subscription
to eliminate the wasted time in a traditional waiting room for those little
things. Obviously, some visits still must be done in person – but think about
the little things like medication refills and follow up visits where the actual
examination part is almost nonexistent. We have all experienced it… an hour
long wait in an uncomfortable waiting room chair just to see the doctor for a 5
minute follow up. My time is too valuable for that, Hello Health offers the
solution. With this technology, I would be able to ‘go to the doctor’ from my
office or from home.
Hello Health is a great example of a great idea that
satisfies a need and applies upstream marketing techniques.
