American Well The Doctor will e-see You Now

Submitted By Akshat Kumar Mandar Golatgaonkar Rishi Nair Vaibhav Patil Vaibhav Rokade Date: Oct 29 2013

Situation Analysis American Well is a healthcare startup company founded by Ido and Roy in 2006. Their business model made use of internet and telephony to connect patients with PCPs. Armed with just an internet connection, the patients would be able to tap into an online pool of physicians who would be able to respond to their requests in realtime, with comparatively negligible turnaround time. This business model is highly efficient and provides value to customers and related businesses by accelerating the process of diagnosis for a patient. The model is beneficial to doctors and health insurance companies as they can use their spare capacity to treat more patients without additional overhead costs. o Patients receive immediate care at a place of their convenience, with same quality as personally visiting a doctor. They also get a wide variety of doctors to choose from, and the whole process is much cheaper than an actual visit to the doctor. o Doctors can select to treat their patients with flexibility. This gives them an overall better value by increasing their income. o The Insurance companies can save costs and get additional business by getting more non-members. Due to the current political situation in US, the healthcare services industry has become extra cautious in spending due to lack of clarity in the reformation of the healthcare sector. American Wells business model will provide affordable medical care to the uninsured section of the population. They will be successful in the market if they conform to the HIPAA(Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, 1996). The business primarily amalgamates healthcare services with sound IT infrastructure, and thus would be exposed to risks involved in electronic transfer of patient data. This business model will undergo thorough scrutiny. Both the founders of American Well are highly qualified physicians who have substantial amount of experience in the healthcare field. This clubbed with their successful entrepreneurial venture CareKey has given them a significant exposure to high net worth investors who have trust in their ability and are ready to finance the project.

There are other companies in the market that are also competing in the Online HealthCare industry: RelayHealth offers online solutions to facilitate patient-physician communication.

Pioneered the use of patient physician email (HIPAA approved) Patients could schedule appointments, update their health records, request lab results, prescription renewals, and referrals. For non-urgent issues, patients can complete interactive online questionnaires describing their symptoms; this information was then transmitted to the patient's physician, to determined if an in-person office visit was necessary. Turnaround time is within 8 hours

Medfusion Medfusion also facilitated online physician-patient communication through its web based platform - Virtual Office Suite. physicians could connect with patients by phone or online. Services included appointment requests, bill payment, prescription renewal, In 2009, Medfusion served more than 28,000 physicians, including over 4,000 practices in various specialties across the U.S., and had over 1 million patient accounts.

TelaDoc TelaDoc offered patients year-round, 24/7 phone access to a network of physicians in a call center model. The company suggested patients use the service when their PCP was unavailable, when traveling, for short-term prescription refills, or to obtain physician advice to supplement that provided by their PCP. Patients were also able to request a medical consultation by accessing their online account or call TelaDoc directly. After reviewing the request and the patient's HER, a licensed physician in the patient's home state would phone the patient, Turnaround time was typically within one hour.

Cisco TelePresence Cisco's TelePresence offers live video conferencing and collaboration and has been adapted to the health services setting to create HealthPresence, which combined TelePresence with medical devices to enable real-time interaction between healthcare providers and patients. Using HealthPresence, patients could interact with physicians over video conference while also sending data collected from medical devices to the physician, enabling real-time evaluation.

Problem Statement 1. American Well has already launched a product in the American market called Online Care, which is slowly gaining foothold. They have a second product in the development pipeline called Team Edition. So should they invest in launching this new product? 2. Should American Well venture into international markets?

Options Venture into Team Edition Continue with Online Care & expand further within US Expand worldwide

Evaluation of Options

American Well can venture into TE as there is hardly any further cost involved. They will be using the same technology which is used for Online Care. So the marginal benefit is much more than the marginal cost involved. However, there are other dominant players. So these existent companies can replicate any novelty brought by American Well. Thus, whatever market share American Well is targeting with its rollout of Team Edition, it will be diluted. Expanding worldwide would need a lot of exposure and capital involvement. American Well is still a young company with 3 years into existence and without a superior grip over the local markets. Expanding internationally would also lead to a dilusion of interest in the present market and this may lead to dissatisfaction among the existing customer base.

Recommendation

After evaluating various options, in our opinion, American Well should currently continue with the existing product in the US markets till it gains a considerable foothold. Also, it should not consider venturing into the international markets considering the cost and dilution of interest constraints.