30A – Final Reflection

1) After reading most of my post in my blog, I could never imagine myself doing so many interviews and writing about them. This class was interesting because it made me get out of my comfort zone to do things, I do not like to do. For me, going out of my way to conduct interviews was a challenge because I do not like to talk to random people, and I got nervous discussing things related to my business concept.

2) Personally, my most formative experience is the elevator pitch. It is an assignment that I will always remember, I feel that my last pitch was my most joyful moment and an accomplishment that I feel proud of. The reason I feel such way is because I do not like to make videos of myself, for the first pitch there were many trials and fails, I expend hours trying to get a decent pitch. This assignment got me anxious. By the third pitch, it almost felt natural, I know it was not perfect, but I was not nervous at all.

3) This class has changed my mind and definition of what an entrepreneur is. I have always wanted to have my own business, now I can see that is something I can achieved, and it is not something that only wealthy people can do.

4) My one and only recommendation for future students is stay on top of the deadlines because you need time to do the interviews required to complete the weekly assignment.

29A – Venture Concept No. 2

1. Venture Concept

· Opportunity:

The opportunity exists in providing proper healthcare services using technology to people in need, without causing a financial strain.

High cost is the main reason U.S citizens have problems accessing health care. Insured and uninsured Americans with below-average incomes are much more likely not to visit a medical doctor when sick, not following with treatment recommendations, or filling out their prescriptions.

High administrative expenses, the cost prescription drugs, new technologies and the increase of chronic diseases, like obesity, are the main reasons health care cost in the United States are inflated.

The United States does not have a single-payer, or a multi-payer universal health insurance. Usually, health care spending comes from private insurances, or federal, state and local government programs.

Currently, customers with medical problems will visit the emergency room or pay out pocket under extreme circumstances.

· Innovation:

Virtual Primary Healthcare

Patients will access the clinic’s website, where they will apply for medical services by creating a personal secure account. During the registration process the client will be asked to provide their personal information, insurance information (if they have insurance), current health information, to upload any medical records, and provide supporting documents such as a license or valid identification card. After their initial set up, the client will schedule a video conference intake appointment. One of our supporting staff will get in touch with the client to verify all the information needed is complete, finalized the creation of the clients account, and schedule their first doctor appointment. When the appointment time arrives, the client will be logging in to their account, check in and one of supporting staff will process the client prior to seeing the doctor. Once, all the information required is gather, the client will be put in queue until the doctor is ready to see them. After the consultation is done, the doctor will send the patient back to one of the supporting staff, where any prescriptions will be sent to their pharmacy of choice, follow appointments will be schedule and laboratory orders or referrals will be email to the patient.

If the client has insurance, the cost per visit will depend on their coverage and deductibles. For uninsured clients, the initial visit will be $80, which is about half the average an office visit, and follow up appointments will cost $40, the average deductible for insured clients.

Profit will be made by cutting administrative cost and fix cost of having a large office. Doctors will work from their own home or office and will be contracted to be paid per client.

· Venture concept:

The concept will be to use existing technology to provide healthcare services to people that cannot afford the high cost of visiting a doctor, have busy lifestyles, or cannot find an office that meets their needs.

The main reason people will switch is affordability, and accessibility. At first, clients will be skeptical because the service is provided in an unconventional way.

The clinic’s competitors are conventional offices that provided in person services. Their weaknesses are price and the time it takes to visit a doctor’s office.

Technology provides the main role of providing virtual services to future patients.

The clinic will be set up like a call center, where supporting staff come in and act as a bridge between clients and doctors. Each supporting staff member will be assigned to a doctor under the supervision of an office manager.

· The three minor elements

The most important resources are having the background knowledge of working in a medical office and knowing quality people like Dr. A, who can provide her expertise and excellent services.

The next opportunity that I will tackle with my virtual clinic is offering specialized services such as psychiatry under the same roof, or virtual clinic.

Five years after launching my business venture, I would like to expand services to more than just one city, since there is only need for one physical location. As an entrepreneur, in the next decade I would to offer services using technology.

2) Summary of the feedback

The comments I receive from my classmates have mostly been positive because they see that online medical services could potentially be the next thing. I few comments talk about people being skeptic of not having that physical presence of a medical provider, but to my knowledge, some hospitals are already using such technology so they do not have to staff every hospital with different specialist. Rather, people are being treated remotely by doctors in emergency rooms. I believe that expanding to nursing homes might be easier because their residents have a care available from trained staff 24 hours a day, and when the client has a consultation, the nurse could be the person helping with any technology issues the patient might have.

3) Describe how you changed your venture concept.

Since I receive positive comments, I did not chance my concept.

28A – Your Exit Strategy

1) Identify the exit strategy you plan to make. Do you intend to sell your business in the next 5 years for a large return? Do you intend to stay with the business for several decades and retire? Do you intend to protect the venture as a family business, and pass it down to your children?

· In the next several decades I would like to stay with my business and make it grow by opening new facilities in different cities and regions where accessible healthcare is needed.

2) Why have you selected this particular exit strategy?

· The main reason that I would like to stay with my business and expand is because not many people see healthcare as a human right or necessity. they see it as a gateway to make money and business model to exploit only for profit. Unfortunately, I have meet people who are going through medical school with the vision only to become wealthy and have a good social status.

3) How do you think your exit strategy has influenced the other decisions you've made in your concept? For instance, has it influenced how you have identified an opportunity? Has it influenced your growth intentions or how you plan to acquire and use resources?

· My exist strategy has definitely influenced my decisions for my business idea. The main reason is because in the United States, there still millions of people without getting proper healthcare. According to statistics, people of low incomes prefer not to go see a physician for the simple reason that they cannot pay for it, even when they have insurance. My plan to grow in the future is influence by need of people who cannot access medical services.

27A – Reading Reflection No. 3

The Art of Social Media: Power Tips for Power Users, Guy Kawasaki


1) What was the general theme or argument of the book?


This book is about practical tips, tricks, and insights strategies of the most popular social-media platforms. The book is easy to understand and guides you through different steps to build a foundation, collect digital assets, enhance your profile, engage more followers, and successfully mix social media and blogging. This book offers a great amount of concise instructions.


2) How did the book, in your opinion, connect with and enhance what you are learning in ENT 3003?

In my opinion this book connects with a lesson professor Pryor gave about marketing yourself. He explained that most people do not use social media correctly and overpay for advertisement services. I think that social media is a powerful tool that entrepreneurs can use to get their product or service to their target market, so one must understand how it works first to utilized correctly.


3) If you had to design an exercise for this class, based on the book you read, what would that exercise involve?


If I had to design an exercise for this class, I will have the students practice for a period of time the techniques and tips provided in the book in reference to perfecting posts, getting more followers, responding to comments, socializing and blogging and then I will gather data to see the difference in the results from before and after implementing the tips.


4) What was your biggest surprise or 'aha' moment when reading the book? In other words, what did you learn that differed most from your expectations?

Learning about “Feeding the Content Monster” was definitely my biggest surprise moment after reading the book. I had no idea about this concept but I am glad I read this book as I know now how to deal with the biggest daily challenge of social media which is finding enough content to share and also known as “Feeding the Content Monster”. Also, I learned that through content creation and content curation this daily challenge or content monster can be feed. Content creation is the conventional perspective: writing copy, taking pictures and/or creating videos, and posting them. The issue with this perspective is that it takes times and makes it harder to attach more than two pieces of content per week to the page. Therefore, the authors suggest that the better perspective is the content curation as is made up of finding high quality content from other people’s social media, then summarizing and sharing it on your page.

26A – Celebrating Failure

1) My most recent failure was an exam I took on Tuesday. The reason I called it a failure is because I did not get the grade I wanted nor expected. This test was the second one for the class and since I did well in the first test, I felt confident, so I did not dedicate the appropriate time to study.

2) There are a few things I have learned from Tuesday’s failure. The first one is that I must prepare myself and study for any upcoming exams. The second one is to listen to the professor because she did say the second exam was much harder.

3) I believed that failure is good, but only if that person can accept and learn from experience. I think the best way I can handle my recent failure is by trying my hardest in the next assignments coming up and always taking time to prepare for future exams. Before ENT3003 failure was not an option, still not, but I know that is not the end and that valuable lessons come from failure.

25A – What’s Next?

Existing Market

What is next for your venture? 

I think that what is next for Virtual Primary Care is to extend to specialized services such as cardiology, neurology and psychiatry. One of doctors’ biggest challenges is to keep up to date on patients’ current treatment provided by other physicians. My virtual clinic ultimate goal is to provide proper healthcare and it can be better achieved by servicing clients with a treatment team that can provide multiple specialized services under one roof.

Feedback

The feedback I received after conducting the interviews was positive. At first, when I talk about my business concept, people look skeptical because they are used to seeing a doctor face to face and specialized doctors always need physical interactions with their patients. In reality, some specialists have to mostly relay in test results and how they interpret them to properly diagnose the patient.

After explaining in detail the concept of the business, potential customers like the idea of not having visit different medical offices to meet their need and filling out the same paperwork multiple times. Since the referral is done internally, the client does not have to find the new doctor or request and bring medical records.

New Market. 

New target market

My business venture is currently set up to serve customers, but a radical new market will be to other facilities that provide healthcare such as nursing homes. All nursing homes have professional staff caring for the residents, but lack in providing medical care. A primary care doctor usually visits the facility and attends its residents, but for specialized services the patient must be transported to the office.

Feedback

For this interviews I was not able to talk to potential clients living in nursing homes, I conducted an interview with a coworker who worked in nursing home and a medical provider that currently works for a medical company that visits nursing homes.

After pitching asking questions about the work environment of nursing homes and pitching my idea, I received different opinions. My coworker was not enthusiastic about it because of the lack of person to person interaction. While the medical provider’s view was positive, she explained that her day will be more productive by actually attending to her client needs instead of driving and wasting time in traffic.

I believed that nursing home residents are a great new market because they can benefit from the blanket of services that my virtual clinic could offer them, and all of them will have insurance coverage.

24B – Venture Concept No. 1

· Opportunity:


The opportunity exists in providing proper healthcare services using technology to people in need, without causing a financial strain.



High cost is the main reason U.S citizens have problems accessing health care. Insured and uninsured Americans with below-average incomes are much more likely not to visit a medical doctor when sick, not following with treatment recommendations, or filling out their prescriptions.



High administrative expenses, the cost prescription drugs, new technologies and the increase of chronic diseases, like obesity, are the main reasons health care cost in the United States are inflated.



The United States does not have a single-payer, or a multi-payer universal health insurance. Usually, health care spending comes from private insurances, or federal, state and local government programs.



Currently, customers with medical problems will visit the emergency room or pay out pocket under extreme circumstances.



· Innovation:

Virtual Primary Healthcare 

Patients will access the clinic’s website, where they will apply for medical services by creating a personal secure account. During the registration process the client will be asked to provide their personal information, insurance information (if they have insurance), current health information, to upload any medical records, and provide supporting documents such as a license or valid identification card. After their initial set up, the client will schedule a video conference intake appointment. One of our supporting staff will get in touch with the client to verify all the information needed is complete, finalized the creation of the clients account, and schedule their first doctor appointment. When the appointment time arrives, the client will be logging in to their account, check in and one of supporting staff will process the client prior to seeing the doctor. Once, all the information required is gather, the client will be put in queue until the doctor is ready to see them. After the consultation is done, the doctor will send the patient back to one of the supporting staff, where any prescriptions will be sent to their pharmacy of choice, follow appointments will be schedule and laboratory orders or referrals will be email to the patient.

If the client has insurance, the cost per visit will depend on their coverage and deductibles. For uninsured clients, the initial visit will be $80, which is about half the average an office visit, and follow up appointments will cost $40, the average deductible for insured clients.

Profit will be made by cutting administrative cost and fix cost of having a large office. Doctors will work from their own home or office and will be contracted to be paid per client.



· Venture concept:



The concept will be to use existing technology to provide healthcare services to people that cannot afford the high cost of visiting a doctor, have busy lifestyles, or cannot find an office that meets their needs.



The main reason people will switch is affordability, and accessibility. At first, clients will be skeptical because the service is provided in an unconventional way.



The clinic’s competitors are conventional offices that provided in person services. Their weaknesses are price and the time it takes to visit a doctor’s office.



Technology to provides the main role of providing virtual services to future patients.



The clinic will be set up like a call center, where supporting staff come in and act as a bridge between clients and doctors. Each supporting staff member will be assigned to a doctor under the supervision of an office manager.





· The three minor elements



The most important resources are having the background knowledge of working in a medical office and knowing quality people like Dr. A, who can provide her expertise and excellent services.



The next opportunity that I will tackle with my virtual clinic is offering specialized services such as psychiatry under the same roof, or virtual clinic.

Five years after launching my business venture, I would like to expand services to more than just one city, since there is only need for one physical location. As an entrepreneur, in the next decade I would to offer services using technology.