Los Angeles is one of the fastest growing tech hubs of the States. Plus, it is one of the major contributors in the medical industry too. Therefore, an entrepreneur planning a fusion of tech and healthcare at a place like LA, with Silicon Beach and a history of successful startups, should know that there is no better time than now to kickstart the venture. If you are one of such aspiring entrepreneurs, here is a quick guide on health tech business venture ideas, plus their monetization models.
Healthcare Startup Ideas
They say, the success of a business venture in modern times depends on two solid factors: a great idea and its right execution. So, here are some trending ideas that are predicted to skyrocket in this decade:
1. Healthcare magazine
This is the quickest example of a health tech venture. You can come up with an online magazine publishing information for people who need insights, tips, tricks and statistics about emerging and traditional health issues. It could be a dedicated blog for pregnant women and further niched down to pregnant women who are also full time working – juggling between their personal life, professional life and their medical conditions. It could be a blog for people of certain physical and mental health conditions, like a forum or support group for diabetic or cancer patients.
While these are general healthcare blog ideas, you can also choose to target a totally different audience interested in medical publications, like researchers, scientists, doctors, medical students, nurses and scholars. There, you can conduct surveys and perform research, talk about recent development in healthcare and what doctors, nurses and patients should expect. Then share those publications with these professionals.
To monetize this health tech business, you can choose from 2 major options: you either distribute the information for free, then run Google AdSense on your blog and earn through ads when your blog reaches 100K visitors. The other option is to sell digital downloads, resources, or even a subscription to some papers on your website. While choosing a monetization option, you’ll have to comprehensively consider your target audience, their demographics, their socio-economic status and then match with your business venture.
2. Healthcare Mobile App Development
Next up is where you need professional help from healthcare app developers. Come up with an idea for an application that serves the medical or fitness needs of your audience. You can launch a workout app, a corporate wellness app, a mental health app or a general app like a pill reminder or disease management system.
There are three ways to monetize a health care application. First up is a free app that earns through ads. If your app is a light-weight app with no serious recommendations or a targeted disease group then you are good to go with ads option. Second is to launch a subscription-based app. Third is to go for a freemium app that has ads in basic version, and ad-free and advanced features in the paid version.
3. Telemedicine
Telemedicine is also a trending venture and it could be small-scale to large-scale. You can start a telemedicine regime from a Facebook or Instagram handle, or you can launch a fully-featured program for telemedicine. Plus, you can choose to provide access to direct doctors or let your users talk to chatbots about their medical needs.
4. Online Medical Consultancy
While online medical consultancy looks like telemedicine, there is a fine line of distinction. In online medical consultancy, you work only as a virtual doctor, and prescribe medication, or therapy or counseling sessions online after booking appointments.
In consultancy, you can be a fitness coach, a therapist, a support companion, or a symptom manager. Now for medical consultants, you can create a custom Shopify store to seamlessly book sessions and receive your compensation, or launch a small app to do the same. In the latter option, you can choose to work with a team of app developers in Los Angeles and come up with an interactive user interface. Consultancy and appointment booking app with digital payment options and profile setups usually take 3 to 5 months for development. During this time, you can actually start to market your venture and build some social following. While you can also choose to monetize this business like any other healthcare app, it is ideal to charge per appointment.
5. Online Physical and Mental Health Courses
Now these are different from telemedicine and consultancy business, because you can train people through pre-recorded sessions. You can start guided meditation courses, coach for yoga, help with anxiety and stress, or come up with a course to cope up with the symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
You can host these courses on websites like Udemy. If your course is for mental wellness for some specific professional group, like nurses or lawyers or teachers, you can also host them on Udemy. The other option is to start a website of your own, host courses there, and attract search engine traffic while publishing industry relevant content.
These courses can be monetized in two different ways. If you are hosting it on a third-party marketplace like Udemy, you’ll charge a fix course price, and the marketplace will deduct its commission. You won’t have to pay extra for marketing or website development or technical glitches. Just upload the course, run a QA and you start!
The other option with the website is you sell your courses in a bundle or subscription basis. This is a more sustainable option and users can choose to pay less and access as many different courses as they need. Plus, you can create further price diversity by allowing teams and groups, sending early bird discounts, and introducing annual and biennial payments.
Wrapping Up…
Any business venture takes sweat and blood in the beginning before it finally takes off and pays back in doubles. Same goes for a health tech startup. You’ll need to market a lot, provide excellent customer service and build a community. But in the end, the returns and rewards are all worth the effort.
