The real opportunities are in healthcare
Every time I go to a doctors office, I’m blown away that I have to fill out the same stupid form, over and over again. I can’t believe all the stacks of files that are in the reception area. Worst of all, when’s the last time you ever went to a doctors office and were seen on time?
How is it that we have created such brilliant technology, software, integrations, UX and ease of use for things like finance, social networking and even currency, but we haven’t dedicated the same effort towards healthcare?
Local mechanics have better systems, procedures, experience and software than local healthcare clinics. How is this still the case?
Healthcare is complicated, I understand this, but tax law is also complicated and we have made quick work of streamlining much of that process with simple products like QuickBooks.
Let me clear, there are lots of companies creating brilliant software products for healthcare, but the issue is the interoperability of them.
Let’s use the example of addiction treatment. For a patient to be admitted into an addiction treatment facility, there are many steps and processes. First, the patient needs to be spoken to. Usually an addiction treatment clinic will need a phone routing system and a CRM. Most typically, this is Call Tracking Metrics and Salesforce.
Next, the patient needs to verify their insurance. This process is clunky and usually requires a phone call to the insurance company. Then there is an admissions process. Once the patient is admitted, there are countless other programs for doctor and patient records, counseling, medication, EMR’s and more.
Once a patient leaves treatment, it only gets more complicated because now the facility needs more software to effectively bill the patient and collect on receivables. To add one more giant layer of complication, all the transfer of information needs to be HIPPA compliant.
This is only one example. This clunky process is repeated, in its own way, for every healthcare industry there is…
Dentists
Dermatologists
Cancer clinics
Health and wellness
Primary doctors
Diabetes and medical supplies
One of the “low hanging fruit” opportunities is to create a network of API’s that can integrate all the software effectively. Countless hours of labor and gigabytes of data storage are wasted transferring information from one product to another.
(In fact, I tried to reach out to Zapier to pitch them on this idea, but I never heard back from them).
The complications and complexities of this field create a world where there is no simple answer. For instance, the nature of addiction treatment is different than the nature of a patient on Medicare who needs diabetes supplies. Billing Medicare is different than billing private insurance and requires different software.
I understand this and I am not trying to oversimplify a complicated issue. I’m merely pointing out that there is a multi billion dollar market out there that is ripe for innovation and development.
When I am on Twitter and talking to up and coming entrepreneurs, I notice that almost all of them are concentrated on “sexier” fields such as content creation, digital product development and community building. The real money and the real opportunities are in healthcare.
Mark my words, the wave next of billion dollar companies will come in health tech. My own company is 100% focused on healthcare, and we are only diving in deeper.
