Mobile medical "2B or not 2B"?

Release date: 2016-04-14

For a long time, the mainstream of mobile medical entrepreneurship is to serve C-end users. Whether it is early comprehensive information, consultation, registration platform, or vertical segmentation that is more concerned in the later stage, it basically revolves around solving the needs of users/patients, such as finding doctors, treating diseases, and maintaining health.

At present, the C-side startup has reached a very critical period, that is, whether the closed loop of offline + insurance can work. This verification process may take a short time. In this very tangled period, we have seen a new trend, that is, entrepreneurship for B-side services has become more active than ever. Compared with the C-side service, the B-end has very different characteristics.

Of course, the services at the B and C terminals are not distinct. For example, the current "insurance hot" is actually a mobile medical company starting from the C-end service and starting to move closer to the insurance company at the B end. However, the starting point of entrepreneurship on the B-end and the C-end is quite different, and the business model of the build is different, especially the way of thinking they contain.

At the B end, it seems that there are still some "unpopular", there are thresholds but there is also room for imagination. So is this very different entrepreneurial direction, is it possible to become a hot spot for entrepreneurship in the coming year or longer? The ghostly question of Hamlet a few hundred years ago suddenly came to the mobile medical field: 2B or not 2B?

B-end methodology

Unlike the entrepreneurship that has a targeted pain point at the C end, the B-side entrepreneurship presents some “randomness”. Although there are many pain points, the emergence of startups depends more on the resources that the founding team has. Before the specific analysis, let us briefly review the general direction of the current B-side entrepreneurship.

In the medical field, there are four main categories of B: hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, companies and insurance companies. As I mentioned earlier, the main attack insurance companies are mobile medical companies starting from the C side. Here we do not analyze, but mainly analyze hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and enterprises. The following entrepreneurial services are all started directly from the B-side organization.

1 hospital

The main body of the medical market in China is a public hospital, and the public hospital has a very strong administrative color. This distorted status quo has led to the formation of extremely complex systems in public hospitals. For a long time, entrepreneurs have stayed away from public hospitals. But in fact, public hospitals also have a lot of pain points, leaving opportunities for entrepreneurs.

Control fee -

In recent years, the pressure on the control of medical insurance funds has increased sharply, and the focus of reform on medical insurance control fees has been in the medical insurance department, payment methods, and refined management. There is no measure at the hospital level, but the problem is that these measures have not fully mobilized the enthusiasm of hospital fees. However, changes in the external environment, such as payment method reform and reform of the government assessment system, still put pressure on the medical insurance management of public hospitals.

In this context, public hospitals are beginning to seek to change the very primitive methods of health care management, such as real-time monitoring of the sales of medical care in each department. Another province, city or hospital with a strong sense of reform has also begun to seek unreasonable prescribing and inspection through the review of prescriptions. Some of the original veteran information vendors have tried a lot in this regard, and recently there are startups joining them. For example, Kuima Medical, which announced financing at the end of last year, is positioned in the PBM business.

supply chain--

When talking about the supply chain, many people will take the plunge because the benefits are too fat. To what extent is fat? It is that you have taken the supply chain business of several hospitals and you are basically ready to go public. Of course, the centralized bidding procurement system implemented in China has led to the public hospital as a procurement system, and the retail pharmacy is another procurement system. There are two types of entrepreneurial forms:

One is for retail pharmacies. It is hoped that through the integration of retail pharmacies, the procurement volume will be increased and the supply chain will be compressed, so as to reduce costs and obtain benefits. Many B2B e-commerce companies do this business. Although this market is not small, it is still much worse than the hospital.

One is for medical institutions, and the logic of retail pharmacies is the same, both make money by improving the efficiency of the supply chain, but the complexity is much larger. Moreover, due to the influence of local procurement policies, the management of this supply chain has added a strong regional color. For example, the medical bee cloud clothing we reported was mainly from Zhejiang Province.

research--

Although scientific research is basically a personal behavior, in a broader sense, more is determined by the attributes of medical institutions, and research is often carried out in the form of a team. Therefore, we include such services in the B-side services. In this field, the most active and urgent is undoubtedly the research related to tumors. Projects we have reported before, such as Xinyu Information and Sipai Network, are traditional ways to transform the research of cancer by using the Internet.

2 clinic

Compared with the hospital, the size of the clinic is much smaller, but the demand for procurement and control fees also exists, but the research is probably much weaker. The biggest difference at the clinic level may be that the degree of marketization is higher, especially in dental clinics, and the degree of marketization is already quite high. As a result, there are startups on the market that offer Saas solutions for dental clinics, such as collar information. There are also startups that offer integrated services based on the Saas system, such as good dentists.

3 pharmaceutical companies

Compared with medical institutions, the degree of marketization of pharmaceutical companies is much higher. This makes things easier. As long as startups can help pharmaceutical companies solve problems, they will pay. Judging from the current entrepreneurial situation, pharmaceutical companies mainly have two aspects of internal and external demand, marketing and research and development.

Marketing -

The first demand for pharmaceutical companies is of course to sell drugs. In the past, pharmaceutical companies sold drugs, mainly relying on medical representatives. This brings many problems, such as commercial bribery and high drug prices. In recent years, with the advancement of medical reform and the improvement of the standardization of China's pharmaceutical market, the space for grey marketing has become smaller and smaller. Pharmaceutical companies are increasingly demanding sunny, efficient and accurate marketing tools.

One consideration is the grafting of drug sales on the mobile medical consultation platform. However, due to various restrictions such as electronic prescriptions and online medical treatment, this path is not well developed. The other is a more pure digital marketing approach. For example, eDoctor, which we have reported, is dedicated to helping pharmaceutical companies, doctors, patients communicate effectively, and the management of medical representatives.

R & D -

The investment in new drug research and development is notorious, and the most important issue is the collection of clinical trial data. Advances in information technology, especially the development of mobile Internet, have not improved the efficiency of clinical trial data collection, but have also expanded the scope of clinical trials. Taimei Medical and Yinggu, which we have reported, are all startups that provide services for pharmaceutical companies.

Of course, research and development includes two aspects, one is the pre-marketing experimental phase, and the other is the post-marketing feedback phase. The aforementioned startups that provide services for pharmaceutical companies can provide post-marketing feedback, and many mobile healthcare companies that provide services to patients can take on this task. Therefore, pharmaceutical companies have also established one of the important ways for mobile medical companies to plan profit models.

4 companies

This company refers to companies other than pharmaceutical companies and insurance companies. The services provided to enterprises are mainly health management services. Although the employees who ultimately enjoy the service are employees, the main body of the transaction between the two parties is between enterprises. And the decision to finalize the deal is also in the hands of the company. That is, medical and health companies mainly meet the needs of enterprises. For example, the good life we ​​have reported before is to focus on the health management of corporate employees.

Difference at the B end

Why is it that the future of B-side entrepreneurship will be even hotter? Why is the value of independent research in B-side entrepreneurship? We can analyze in detail:

The service on the B side will face some relatively high thresholds. Unlike the users on the C side, the means of advertising, pushing and selling money, etc. can be used to brush out traffic. The B end does not work. The hospital has to buy the account, the pharmaceutical company has to pay the money, and the enterprise has to agree. The products must meet certain standards, otherwise the transaction cannot be realized. This also leads to the To B-type startups, the expansion speed must be very slow, because you can only talk to one family.

But sometimes, the speed of expansion is not necessarily the determining factor for the success or failure of business in the medical field. Especially the startup company on the B side.

First of all, if your product is good enough. Because the people who pay the bill only believe in products and services, do not believe in the story. Can fully meet the needs of the B-end users, you can actually generate revenue. As can be seen from the cases we reported, in fact, most of the projects, including projects that have received financing from investment institutions, already have good revenues before financing. At this time, the purpose of financing for most startups is often to use external funds to speed up their expansion and form a scale advantage.

Second, because the threshold of B-side services is relatively high, it puts higher demands on the professionalization ability of the startup company and the experience of the team. Storytelling is no longer feasible. That's why, To B's services don't have the same kind of scuffle in the field of diabetes. Moreover, a careful look at the background of the founders of each of the B-side startups will reveal that they basically have relevant industry experience or research background. Unlike the C-end, there is a large-scale “popularization” of entrepreneurship.

Third, in terms of the most concerned business model, the B-side startup's profit model is more scalable. Although the big data on the C side is full of infinite imagination, it is probably far from being realized. The B end is different, and does not say the existing revenue, the data generated by the B end is often more professional and accurate, although the amount is not large. And the type of business at the B end can also be more abundant, such as supply chain finance. In addition, the services on the B side are often more demanding, and there are certain advantages in extending services to the C side.

The existence of these differences makes the B-side service an area that can be observed independently. But we must pay attention to a key issue, that is, the B-side startups will increase the efficiency, but the efficiency is improved based on the changes in the stock of the industry. This means that the entrepreneurial team must not only have the ability to mobilize the resources of the traditional industry, but also must face the strong resistance of the vested interests. The challenge is huge.

But Ward Lauban has a famous saying that there is no problem that can't be solved, otherwise there will be no BAT today. Therefore, the entrepreneurial trend at the B end should be worthy of continuous attention.

Second opinion: B-side thinking

In the process of discussing the B-side startup, I realized a problem: B-side thinking. Perhaps it helps us to reflect on the bottlenecks encountered at the C end. From our observations, the entrepreneurial thinking of mobile medical C is still more affected by e-commerce. Although the process of finding pain points requires medical vision and knowledge, the solution to these pain points is a bit like e-commerce.

For example, why does mobile medical care have a doctor's opinion? Because many people define doctors as scarce resources, they think that as long as they show their doctors through the mobile app, many people will compete for the services of doctors like the adidas Originals NMD. Although there are still people who think so today, practice has long proved that this idea is wrong.

Not only that, but also in the field of diabetes, this e-commerce idea also exists. The idea of ​​a startup company is that if there is a need for “five carriages” for people with diabetes or high-risk groups, then the five carriages will be displayed on the mobile APP, and the patients will naturally purchase and manage themselves. If this logic can be established, then no one in the world will have diabetes.

This is the impact of e-commerce thinking on medical entrepreneurship. However, services in the medical field cannot be simplified simply as a sale of a commodity. I have always had a puzzle, why people still pay after going through a bad medical experience in the hospital, but they are not willing to pay for the APP on the phone to help them "solve" the problem. Some people say that the transactions in the hospital are forced because you have nowhere else to go except for public hospitals. I don't think it's right.

If we dismantle a medical treatment process, from registration, triage, consultation, examination, interpretation, and prescribing, although the whole process experience is not pleasant, the hospital does provide complete services for every patient who comes to the hospital. What does the Mobile Medical Mobile App offer? Because mobile medical care is positioned to provide medical services to users, it must defeat the hospital's competitors.

For example, if a person is ill, the most important need is to see a doctor. But in this main appeal, there are many other needs, such as one of the patient's needs is true and reliable about the diagnosis of their condition. How does mobile medical solve this problem? Chatting for ten dollars?

But the service at the B end will never be that simple, like the supply chain. As a startup company, it is definitely impossible to achieve the final transaction only by displaying the information of both parties. It must dock the hospital's information system to grasp the procurement data, and at the same time access the manufacturer, the distributor, and also the warehousing and transportation of the product. Monitor and even track each product. Only when a company has this series of capabilities can a hospital purchase its services.

In other words, the so-called B-side thinking means to exhaust all the needs of the other party. In a sense, the lack of B-side thinking may be an important reason why doctors and patients do not buy mobile medical care. For example, many mobile medical companies are doing doctors and patients, whether it is online consultation or offline trading, but the effect is not good.

Since the needs of doctors are relatively clear, we can analyze this problem from a doctor's perspective with a 2B perspective. The doctor has multiple levels of demand for the patient, 1. the patient is required; 2. the patient needs to be treated for his own treatment; 3. the patient who needs to have the ability to pay; 4, the patient who needs the least risk after treatment. To achieve these requirements, you need a very professional triage team. After the treatment, it is necessary to master the entire rehabilitation process, which in turn requires disease management. And this is just a requirement for doctors to be doctors.

Doctors often have two other identities, researchers and educators. I often listen to the doctor, I am very busy with my work, and I have time to answer questions online. Is the doctor just busy seeing a doctor? No, there is research and teaching to be busy. So if the doctor's entire medical, scientific research, and teaching can be done on the mobile platform, will they still not buy it? Is this impossible? It seems that someone is already doing this.

Here is just a doctor's example of a B-side thinking. Because this is a very abstract thing, it is actually difficult to be embodied in a certain form. The B-side thinking is mainly to help us see the problems faced by mobile medical care at present, in fact, the service is not enough. In other words, the first company to truly penetrate the service should be the first company to make money.

Source: 36æ°ª

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