Value for customers is created differently on platforms than by traditional product/service business models. Today we’ll present and discuss the metaphor of how traditional businesses can be thought of as “pipelines” and how these pipes differ from digital platforms. This post is the first in a new series: “The New Rules of Healthcare Platforms.” We’ll be writing about platform thinking, new mental models, and the new economics of platform business models and strategy. We’ll have at least seven posts to explain these new rules. You’ll have some unlearning to do. We’ll illustrate how platform business models are fundamentally different than traditional product/service business models. To understand platforms, we need to change more than just our thinking—we need to learn new rules about how the digital world works and how platforms fit in.
Vince Kuraitis
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9th Annual Healthcare Unbound Conference Features Information Technologies Inspiring Consumer Engagement and Behavior Change
The Ninth Annual Healthcare Unbound Conference & Exhibition, organized by The Center for Business Innovation (TCBI), will focus on technology-enabled participatory medicine connecting everyone in the care continuum interested in inspiring consumer engagement and facilitating accountable care. The conference will take place at the Hotel Kabuki in San Francisco, CA, on July 19-20, 2012.
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Does your Healthcare Company have a Platform Business Model?
Your Company Has A Technology Platform…But Do You Have A Platform Business Model and Strategy? Today in healthcare, platforms are understood mostly as technology. That’s not wrong, but it’s limiting and it misses a huge opportunity to adopt a platform business model. In most other industries platforms are also understood as a business model and strategy. Outside of healthcare, there are 45+ books focusing on this topic...A platform business model connects producers and consumers — creating an ecosystem that facilitates value exchange and interaction between them. Unlike traditional linear business models, where companies primarily produce and sell products or services directly to customers, platform models serve as intermediaries, making connections and facilitating interactions between two (or more) parties.
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The Missing Ingredient in Today's Patient Portals: Network Effects (Part 4)
As described in the first three posts in this series, today’s patient portals are inherently flawed and doomed to mediocrity. The result is that today’s patient portals cannot achieve a critical mass of adoption and utilization, and therefore portals can’t achieve network effects. In this post, we will: Summarize key points from the first three posts in this series; Explain how today’s patient portals miss out on three types of network effects; Explain the implications: why tomorrow’s portals must be reconfigured to achieve network effects
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The New Rules of Healthcare Platforms (Part 1): Value Creation Shifts from Pipes to Platforms
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The New Rules of Healthcare Platforms (Part 2): Pipe Scale vs. Platform Scale
Platform businesses scale differently than traditional businesses. Platforms scale through network effects. In the previous post, we introduced and described a widely used metaphor: pipes vs. platforms. Traditional businesses are pipes. Their value chains are linear. Value is added at sequential stages before a final product or service is delivered to consumers at the end of the pipeline. Platforms do not produce goods or services themselves—they make connections among stakeholders and facilitate value exchange among those stakeholders. Value is created outside the platform. Both pipeline businesses and platform businesses strive to achieve scale—but the type of scale they strive for is vastly different. In this post, we’ll explain how pipeline businesses strive for economies of scale (on the supply side) and how platform businesses scale through network effects (on the demand side).
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The New Rules of Healthcare Platforms (Part 3): Platform Thinking Expands from “Technology” to Business Model & Strategy
Today in healthcare, platforms are understood mostly as “technology”. That’s not wrong, but it’s limiting. We want to offer you a more expansive view of platforms, and in turn, understand platforms as being more than just technology. This post is the third in our series on The New Rules of Healthcare Platforms. In this essay, we will: Explain why platform business models are NOT new; Share a survey of health plan execs that documents a view of platforms as “technology”; Explain how network effects are the North Star of platform business models and strategy; Expand your view of platforms beyond just “technology.”
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The New Rules of Healthcare Platforms (Part 4): APIs Enable the Platforming of Healthcare
Recent regulations have mandated the use of HL7 FHIR APIs (application programming interfaces) to share health data. The regs apply to healthcare providers, payers, and technology developers who participate in federal programs. Many incumbent healthcare organizations are viewing these mandates as a compliance burden. That’s short-sighted. We recommend a more opportunistic POV. APIs facilitate the sharing of health data across different devices and platforms. By adopting APIs, healthcare organizations can transform themselves from traditional service providers into powerful platforms that can connect patients, providers, and other stakeholders in new and innovative ways.
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Today's Patient Portals CAN NOT Capture Network Value (Part 2)
Today’s patient portals are a mess. The catchphrase “Your mom has 7 portals for 7 providers” sums up patients’ frustrations and the resulting tepid utilization of portals. Today’s portals CAN NOT capture network value. The first post in this series introduced the platform terminology of single-homing vs. multihoming. Patients strongly would prefer to have as few portals as possible — ideally one, i.e., a single “home”. However, patients are forced to subscribe to multiple homes since today’s portals are tethered to individual institutions or care providers. In this post, we’ll introduce the platform terminology of stand-alone vs. network value. Today’s patient portals can provide some stand-alone value, but they provide minimal network value.
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Today's Patient Portals CAN NOT Work: Friction ACROSS Portals (Part 3)
Friction across multiple patient portals dramatically limits their usefulness—there’s no practical way for patients OR providers to reconcile and integrate information and workflow. This is the third post in our series on patient portals. We’ve used platform terminology and concepts to explain why today’s patient portals are doomed to mediocrity. Let’s recap: The first post in this series introduced the platform terminology of single-homing vs.multihoming. Patients strongly would prefer to have as few portals as possible — ideally one, i.e., a single “home”. The second post described the difference between stand-alone value and network value. Today’s patient portals can provide some stand-alone value, but they provide minimal network value. In this post we’ll discuss the pitfalls of friction across multiple portals. Your mom having seven portals is more than just inconvenient—it’s dangerous.
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9th Annual Healthcare Unbound Conference
The Ninth Annual Healthcare Unbound Conference & Exhibition, organized by The Center for Business Innovation (TCBI), will focus on technology-enabled participatory medicine connecting everyone in the care continuum interested in inspiring consumer engagement and facilitating accountable care. The conference will take place at the Hotel Kabuki in San Francisco, CA, on July 19-20, 2012.
"Healthcare is reaching the defining moment when patients and care providers are clearly seeing the value of sharing health information to provide accountable care,” said Vince Kuraitis, JD, MBA, principal, Better Health Technologies, LLC, a conference chairperson, advisory board member and keynote speaker. Kuraitis added a message to the attendees to “explore how this shift paves the way for Healthcare Unbound technologies and business models"
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The Platform Revolution Comes to Healthcare: A Deep Dive at the 2022 MIT Platform Strategy Summit
The MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy is excited to announce the innagural 1/2 day event leading into the 10th Annual MIT Platform Strategy Summit the following day, on July 14.* Through several feature keynotes and panel sessions involving industry experts, this event designed to explore how digital health platforms are key enablers of transformation in healthcare. For example, healthcare platforms have the potential to:
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