Hi friends,
I am a finalist in a business competition where the winner's project might be financed should it be deemed appealing and feasible enough. We are solving for accessible healthcare in rural areas in third world countries.
THE PROBLEM
Our team determined that a lot of healthcare providers, producers, and workers are centralized in urban areas. Large rural communities have less options in seeking healthcare due to the lack of healthcare institutions, and what small number of institutions there are does not have an ideal reach/ service radius due to the lack of infrastructure. Roads or means connecting hospitals with their producers, and with rural communities are severely lacking.
THE PROPOSED SOLUTION
Our team wanted to leverage community health workers through digitization. Sort of like an 'Uber' for CHWs, where health workers within rural communities are given training (diagnose, prevent, and treat 10 most common diseases, etc), equipment (phones, testing kits, health kits, etc), and certification, along with financial incentives to turn it from an informal role, into a formal job.
THE PROBLEM TO THE SOLUTION
We originally envisioned our CHWs to generate revenue from also acting as a logistic provider for healthcare institutions. We didn't want to charge the rural communities because we thought they would not have a large enough buying power for that. However, regulations and standards relating to transporting medicine and healthcare equipment are just way too strict for that to be feasible. So now we're brainstorming ideas on pivoting to another revenue stream. So far we've come up with charging hospitals for referals, but this is not nearly as sustainable a business model as is commanded in the CENTS framework (we have little control and it has low margins, and low scale of impact).
THE QUESTION
Similar Community Health Workers-as-a-service models rely on grants to function. We'd rather not rely on external funding and have a revenue stream of our own, but we're unsure how to capture value and from whom. Would you guys have references/ ideas/ experiences? All help is sincerely appreciated.
Thank you in advance, Fastlaners!
Lz
I am a finalist in a business competition where the winner's project might be financed should it be deemed appealing and feasible enough. We are solving for accessible healthcare in rural areas in third world countries.
THE PROBLEM
Our team determined that a lot of healthcare providers, producers, and workers are centralized in urban areas. Large rural communities have less options in seeking healthcare due to the lack of healthcare institutions, and what small number of institutions there are does not have an ideal reach/ service radius due to the lack of infrastructure. Roads or means connecting hospitals with their producers, and with rural communities are severely lacking.
THE PROPOSED SOLUTION
Our team wanted to leverage community health workers through digitization. Sort of like an 'Uber' for CHWs, where health workers within rural communities are given training (diagnose, prevent, and treat 10 most common diseases, etc), equipment (phones, testing kits, health kits, etc), and certification, along with financial incentives to turn it from an informal role, into a formal job.
THE PROBLEM TO THE SOLUTION
We originally envisioned our CHWs to generate revenue from also acting as a logistic provider for healthcare institutions. We didn't want to charge the rural communities because we thought they would not have a large enough buying power for that. However, regulations and standards relating to transporting medicine and healthcare equipment are just way too strict for that to be feasible. So now we're brainstorming ideas on pivoting to another revenue stream. So far we've come up with charging hospitals for referals, but this is not nearly as sustainable a business model as is commanded in the CENTS framework (we have little control and it has low margins, and low scale of impact).
THE QUESTION
Similar Community Health Workers-as-a-service models rely on grants to function. We'd rather not rely on external funding and have a revenue stream of our own, but we're unsure how to capture value and from whom. Would you guys have references/ ideas/ experiences? All help is sincerely appreciated.
Thank you in advance, Fastlaners!
Lz
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