Idea Napkin No. 2

Who you are: 

I am a 24 year old living in Gainesville, Florida, going to school at the University of Florida. As a senior, I study Political Science and I'm graduating this semester. My key skills are both independent and interpersonal. Independently, I think critically and enjoy breaking down problems to find the best solutions, especially when it comes to problems involving people or organizations. On an interpersonal level, some of my key skills include leadership, communication, and operations management (efficiently managing an operation or a system). Some of the experience I have that is relevant to this business idea include a few internships with companies in the area of operations that included projects of improving systems of communication and flow in a building, similar to that of a hospital (which is what the idea is centered on). I see this idea playing a role because of how I can apply what I have already learned in these internships. Additionally, this idea ties into personal experience I have had with hospitals and seeing very clearly that a better solution is needed.

What are you offering to customers:

I am offering a more centralized location for managing the flow of patients going in and out of a hospital or busy medical service building. This application will track the flow of patients in real-time, reporting the most efficient placement of patients based on condition and area of hospital that is available. This application will also increase patient satisfaction in its reporting of the wait-time for patients once they have signed in. The application will provide efficiency metrics for hospitals to better communicate the status of decisions, flow, and other matters between all staff, including desk assistants. The physicians will log in the preliminary info for the patient so the program knows how long a patient has been in a specific room. Based on this data, the program will generate a wait time based on the average time taken for each case logged by the physicians and multiply that by the number of people in the hospital area that that patient would be admitted into. 

Who are you offering it to:

The customers will be any medical service, primarily hospitals, who have a flow of patients that varies based on the condition of the patient being served. These customers all need to choose the more efficient route in where to send/place these patients when it comes to bedding, in order to process other patients more quickly (because of the danger of some conditions getting worse).  The customers all serve customers that need to be housed in a certain location for some period of time. They do not just check in and leave within the hour (typically).

Why do they care:

Hospitals or medical services will pay for this product because it saves them time and money in processing their clients/patients. This saving is better for them, because it means they can provide a better service to patients coming into the hospital/ER, which in turn helps them grow as an entity. There is a lot of time that could be wasted without a centralized location that is portable and accessible. They may use other services to track these metrics, but they are not housed in one location and used in real time to make staffing and room assignment decisions. They would be able to do this with this application and it will benefit their operation overall in the long run. They would probably pay for it by yearly subscription.

What are your core competencies:

My core competencies, related to this business idea, are a seamless user experience, an understanding of the customer and their customer (the patient), and proven results. The seamless user experience competency means that the application will not just be effective in producing what it promises it will produce, but also in how it presents the data and is intuitive when using it. This is similar the theory of Apple's success - where they offer a good product, but it is the reliability or the experience and the ease of it that most people continue in their loyalty. Secondly, the application will serve hospital management but also the patient. Because it serves the patient's needs as well (such as knowing their wait-time), the hospital will be more willing to purchase it if they know their patient experience will be improved. This app will be more in touch with that experience than others. Lastly, this app will have proven results, with metrics that are backed by better math, providing information to hospitals that they always need.


Reflect:
I believe there are some aspects that are weaker or out of joint than others. This includes my lack of knowledge in the healthcare field and how the operations of the ER room and the traditional hospital actually function. I also think my core competency of having a seamless user experience for this product is very unique, but the core competency of understanding the customer experience is something that can be easily replicated by competitors. I think hospitals do care to make their service more efficient, but would be unsure of the reliability of this type of program and may give pushback to transferring control of decision making for patients out of their hands and into that of the computer. I think the results can be the best selling point.

Changes from Feedback:
Initially, I did not include the details of how the doctors would receive and input information for the desk assistants to see or for the program to calculate and present to the patient. Based on this feedback, I added this detail to the what can I offer section of the napkin and explained briefly the flow of how the system would work. This gives more information on how it will actually function and calculate the estimated time. That was the only negative feedback I received and the only change I made. Although that counts as two.