Kerry Morgan
7/16/2020
Ent-436
Maranville
Telemedicine
One helpful item this pandemic has given is showing us is how we can work, attend school and be seen by our doctors form the comfort of our own homes or cars. Telemedicine or a virtual platform can reach those people who cannot financially or physically make it to an appointment, think of the elderly patients who have limited mobility or the patients who are in pain and movement is difficult. Telemedicine can also help those in medically underserved, rural areas as well as the lower income communities which generally have limited access to health care by allowing a virtual platform access to those areas.
Having access to doctors via a virtual platform in the comfort of home and the convenience of an appointment at a specified time that is convenient to their schedules could increase the medical care of all. With life expectancy growing, the medical world needs to expand their idea of appointments or visits from the old conceptual way to include this new virtual way. An alternative option to medical visits could benefit the elderly, disabled, low income, rural-located as well as underserved areas. Partnering with local clinics, doctors and government organizations, adding an I.T. team to supply them with the technology needed to support the virtual platform. This service could also be helped by having the government help with re-payment of loans for startup or reimbursement of co-pays which should help counter set the high financial cost. Channeling out our direct sales to rural clinics, state Medicaid, using medical schools, hospital and conferences for advertising will help initiate the virtual movement of medicine and cut some costs for marketing.
Financially we are looking at fixed costs of administrative fees as well as IT costs with a variable price based on salaries and marketing. Our source of income will be from the government reimbursements for services along with the insurance companies for those visits billed with insurance. That is to say, those meeting some low income criteria without insurance will not be charged in any way. If we gain the momentum expected in the first year of service, the virtual platform could be in the hundreds of thousands and in the next three years when the new wave of virtual medical visits begins there would be a potential market income that could hit in the millions.
By providing a virtual platform for connecting doctors with patients we can hope that those without the mobility and means physically or financially would still be able to get the medical care that they need to live a good quality of life. Adding this virtual platform could potentially reduce the traffic in a doctor’s office which would potentially lower overall exposure, especially in times of a pandemic, and decrease the inpatient load on a doctor. This could be considered a win-win situation for everyone involved.
I just need to reach the word count without rambling, sorry I had to complete it this way but it was the only shot I had.
Reference:
Chen, Shengnan & Cheng, Alice & Mehta, Khanjan. (2013). A Review of Telemedicine Business Models. Telemedicine journal and e-health: the official journal of the American Telemedicine Association. 19. 287-97. 10.1089/tmj.2012.0172.
C. Kimble. Business Models for E-Health: Evidence from Ten Case Studies. Global Business and Organizational Excellence, 34(4), 2015, pp. 18-30. DOI: 10.1002/joe.21611
How to Start a Telehealth Business Retrieved from: https://archer-soft.com/blog/how-start-telehealth-business
Peters, C.; Blohm, I. & Leimeister, J. M. (2015): Anatomy of Successful Business Models for Complex Services: Insights from the Telemedicine Field. In: Journal of Management Information Systems (JMIS), Ausgabe/Number: 32, Vol.
Applied Science/Engineering Research Anatomy of Successful Business Models for Complex Services: Insights from the Telemedicine Field, Erscheinungsjahr/Year: 2015. pp. 75-104.
