#30-Best Partners for Orchestrating a Health-Tech Ecosystem or Platform Business

Sidhartha Sharma- Platform and Digital Ecosystem Expert

Uber, Grab, Go-Jek are the go-to-app for mobility and food-delivery. Facebook, TikTok, WeChat are go-to social apps. Amazon, Alibaba, Lazada, Shopee, Flipkart are the goto app for e-commerce. Netflix, Youtube is the go-to platform for OTT.

I have just taken a few global and regional names, at the country level the list will be even longer, but do you recall a global app for Healthcare yet. Wearable players like Apple iWatch are making a foray into certain heath non-invasive categories (ECG, Blood oxygen), but the real healthcare customer journey pain points are not being addressed head-on.

Any company with deep-pockets can orchestrate a platform, but there are certain players who have an ‘unfair advantage’ beyond the money:

1. They are the incumbents
2. or the adjacent industry player best suited to address the system inefficiencies, because they can create a compelling value proposition
3. Orchestration and execution edge- due to competitive advantage

There is a big opportunity for a Global Healthcare SuperApp that combines the benefits of all the lifestyle data points along with complex healthcare asks that the patients may have.

Telemedicine apps may start with simple booking/appointment features but eventually they evolve into full fledged heathcare ecosystems with:

1. High user stickiness
2. Doctor content and devices requirements
3. Complex — Chronic disease management
4. Smart care
5. Pharmacy delivery support
6. Insurance and HMO
7. Potential data monetization models

Teladoc

Ping an’s Good doctor is another example of how the healthcare super apps may look like.

Build and they will come is no longer apt in the times, when the platforms are already starting to mature in a few industries and regions.

StartUp or a Telemedicine Player- Teladoc from the US, HaloDoc, and Alodocket from Indonesia, Doctor Anywhere + MyDoc from Singapore, KonsultaMD from Philipines are some of the examples from this category. Operate as an aggregator model by creating an online marketplace through doctor listings and then acquiring customers through marketing campaigns.

Hospital/Provider- Every big hospital chain (10+ hospitals or care centers in a city or 20+ in a country)can mobilize a healthcare platform app. The two biggest hooks being- doctor+patient online interactions and physical hospital network to provide ‘treatment beyond consultations’

MedTech Company- A MedTech player like Siemens Healthneers, they have access to hospital networks clients across a country, region, and globally.

Seimens Healthineers

Insurance and HMO- Cigna Group Insurance (CGI) and FINEOS Corporation, a market leader in core systems for life, accident, and health insurance carriers, launched FINEOS AdminSuite, which is a unified platform that provides centralized policy administration, integrated claims and leaves management, and complex billing and revenue management capabilities together with digital and analytics enablement to further enhance the experience for employers and their employees.

Another example is Ping An, a traditional insurance player that forayed into telehealth through Good doctor- China’s most successful healthcare app.

Image-Ping An

They generate a lot of data about the patients from claims filed and a tonne of EMR access.

Pharmacy companies- On-demand Genuine medicine access is a big pain point. Thus the online pharmacy platforms, with loyalty programs and consumer medical prescription records have a strong competitive advantage. E-commerce companies have not been able to capture the opportunity beyond US. Amazon has big plans to disrupt the pharmacy business.

Globewire

According to the Globe Newswire, The global online pharmacy market by revenue is expected to grow at a CAGR of over 20% during the period 2019–2025.

Big Pharma- Chronic diseases that require dose and patient monitoring is the category that Big Pharma can monetize. The content, research, and studies they can share from the authenticated sources create user-stickiness and platform credibility. They can also target the proposition based on disease areas. Pfizer launched a new LivingWith app for cancer patients After the successful smoking cessation app, Quitter’s Circle, Pfizer’s new app hopes to help cancer patients.

Internet Giant with Hardware Capabilities and data analytics- Apple (iWatch), Amazon (Halo), and Google (Fitbit) through wearable products are trying to capture the healthcare/lifestyle primary data. It has started as a non-invasive tech play with capabilities like ECG, Bloodoxygen, sleep patterns, fall detection. As the R&D capabilities advance they will try to capture a bigger share of the Connected MedTech pie.

Pillars of Platform-Economics

In the nutshell, when it comes to platform and digital ecosystem mobilization- few things matter the most:

1. Proximity to the community of consumer (to emerge as the gatekeeper)
2. Content to keep the marketplace engaged
3. The unparalleled customer experience (UI/UX)
4. Non-cannibalizing, non-eroding partnerships that create value for each other
5. Profit Economics at- per Unit level of the transaction, and keeping the volume upside in mind(else cash burn becomes a problem)

Best regards,

Sidhartha Sharma

Sidhartha is a Digital Ecosystem and Platform business models expert.

views are personal

Read- Healthcare Ecosystems-Part 1 here

https://sidhartha-sharma.medium.com/healthcare-ecosystems-the-platform-opportunity-in-telemedicine-115075c23941