From the ancient indigenous medication to the modern-day artificial intelligence-empowered doctors and diagnosis, the healthcare world has experienced a monstrous change, and the same can be said about the developing countries. Even though the pace of development in some countries is still slow when one compares it to Western economies, due to the huge market for healthcare services, from multiple points of view, India is the final frontier for healthcare technology or health tech.
An expansion in the population, environmental imbalances and changing lifestyles pose more challenges to healthcare providers as new diseases pop up, yet technology is empowering humans to overcome diseases similarly as fast. To counter new difficulties and focus on mass scale solutions, technology and automation must be empowered and encouraged in the Indian healthcare sector.
The industry is growing at an enormous pace owing to increased penetration of technology, enhanced healthcare policies, and improved connectivity. Over the past few years, this growth has additionally manifested itself in epharmacy and telemedicine startups which are taking care of the issue of access. As per the DataLabs by Inc42, the health tech sector recorded total funding of $586.93 Mn in 2019, an expansion of over 10% in the amount of funding from the earlier year.
The challenges for healthcare startups today are preventing many aspiring entrepreneurs to step into this competitive market. Thusly, what are the difficulties for healthcare startups that they should be careful about to succeed?
Growth: A Frustrating Process
You may have seen stories about the quick rise of tech firms like Dropbox or Amazon. Yet in healthcare, things are different.
Healthcare is an industry with famously slow growth, and ideas if untested are impossible. Since healthcare deals directly with a person’s well-being, it might take months or years with scientific proof that a solution may work. Accordingly, growth may sometimes be unforeseeable.
With this in hindsight, some healthcare startups may not endure their first years. Their expense and budget might be too much that they critically need quick growth to compensate for the losses.
Organization
Lack of Doctors
Another challenge for healthcare startups today is organization. For instance, startups in certain nations face a lack of doctors, consequently, they can’t establish a professional team. If a healthcare startup doesn’t have great doctors, they can’t have a firm base in such a competitive industry. Another issue is that numerous specialists are new to healthcare software on computers or mobile devices. They tend to stick to traditional strategies and reluctant to adapt to new technology.
Staff
Moreover, healthcare startups may have issues with their staff. At times, not every person from interns to the CEO dutifully share a similar vision and mission. Healthcare startup founders should set up a stable working environment, a company culture, among other things to market the attractiveness of the workplace. They likewise need to watch out who to recruit for the firm to guarantee a strong, committed workforce.
Customer Trust
Credibility is unquestionably something not to mess around with regards to individuals’ well-being. Many healthcare firms opted to emphasize revenue rather than trust, and this leads to dire consequences.
Startups must remember that unlike other industries, customers are increasingly wary in healthcare. For instance, hot startup Theranos with a $9 billion value couldn’t prove the reliability of its blood test technology. This by itself caused significant damage to the firm’s brand and customer loyalty.
Therefore, building trust is the first and most vital challenges for healthcare startups. Healthcare startups can discover a way around this challenge with official recognition.
Security and Privacy
Hospitals, clinics, and medical institutions are progressively using technology to store patient data. Furthermore, similarly as with everything else in technology, this storage system isn’t without risks. Since electronic data storage is a lot simpler to manage, healthcare firms and clinics often ignore the possibility of a breach by those looking personal gain. The misuse of this data can lead to dire consequences, for example, loss of clients, financial damages, blackmailing, and so on.
Regardless, healthcare firms must protect the information of their patients/clients to maintain ethicality. If a patient’s data is secure from harm, they will have more confidence in the firm that is keeping it. The American National Standards Institute revealed in 2015 that security breaching has influenced almost 18 million Americans’ health data privacy. As it becomes clear today that there is restricted protection against data exploitations, there must be a solution.
There is tech security firms set up to help healthcare startups handle security issues with electronic data storage. Software development has matured throughout the years to assist hospitals and governments in developing mechanisms against data breaching. Consequently, it is worth to spend some of the budgets on securing data privacy of patients than to do nothing.
Failing to Deliver as Expected
In perhaps one of the greatest controversies ever to land in the healthcare startup world, Theranos, a $9-billion-value startup, failed to prove the adequacy of its blood test technology. The “over-the-top” guarantees are not uncommon among startups, yet in healthcare, it is unique. Healthcare is a progressively serious industry, so mistakes are practically unforgivable from a customer’s point of view.
Every healthcare tech startup firms must avoid this. If just one relatively unknown firm commits a similar mistake, the entire industry suffers. Thus, other healthcare startups will be influenced. Unreliable products, failing to meet deadlines, improper doctors, and other similar issues are heartbreaking to everybody in the healthcare industry. So healthcare startups must remember all these when leading business and focusing on growth.
End
As a being Founder I can clearly see, The healthcare startup world is growing at an exponential rate, with both risks and opportunities offered. Combined with the blast of technology, this can be viewed as a golden age for medicinal services entrepreneurs. The challenges for healthcare startups might be there, yet in time nothing is impossible for talented visionaries in healthcare industry worldwide.
