How do we make something people want?
Hello and welcome! This blog chronicles our journey at DocTalk. DocTalk is a mobile application that allows users to safely save all their medical files and history, so that they never have to carry files again. Using the app, patients can also chat with their doctors remotely, share the saved reports and get consultations and prescriptions on-the-go. Download here.
TL;DR — A startup’s mission is to make something people want. ‘Make something’ that ‘people want’. A stricter test is ‘Make something people want strongly enough that they would pay for it’. Throughout DocTalk’s ideation and execution process we kept going back to that motto. This is a constant process and will never end.
Read about our successful Y Combinator application experience in our next blog post — “How we became Y Combinator Fellows”
“An idea for a startup is only a beginning. A lot of would-be startup founders think the key to the whole process is the initial idea, and from that point all you have to do is execute. Venture capitalists know better. If you go to VC firms with a brilliant idea and ask them to sign a nondisclosure agreement, most will tell you to get lost. That shows how much a mere idea is worth. The market price is less than the inconvenience of signing an NDA.”
All of us are always trying to think of that perfect idea. Is the idea big enough? Is it good enough? Well, ideas change. Ideas evolve. Ideas often fail. If you are working hard and actually speaking to users or potential users, then ideas are never constant. FB went from an ‘online directory for college students’ to a platform connecting 1.6bn people. Bill Gates and Paul Allen went from interpreting programming languages to Microsoft.
As PG says, the main thing for a startup is to make a difficult process simple. Indian healthcare is a myriad of difficult processes. We started studying data, researching trends and most importantly speaking to doctors and patients to identify their pain points. We found out that India has 0.7 doctors per 1000 people. We found out that in parts of our nation, pizza delivery is quicker and more organized than emergency healthcare. We found out that experts believe that chronic disease burden in India is on a sharp rise and 330,000 doctors are needed to curb the gap. We decided that doctor-patient communication /access— the core of the healthcare ecosystem — is something we wanted to focus on, for patients with chronic conditions.
The initial idea
So, like a lot of other aspiring entrepreneurs in India, we initially set out to create a telemedicine app that allows patients to quickly contact a new doctor. Cavity? Contact a dentist in seconds. Cataract? An ophthalmologist is just a couple clicks away. This sounded like a great idea to us but we weren’t convinced so we gave it some more thought.
The research phase
Lets break down our initial thought process a little bit. For any such telemedicine app to work, there need to be doctors who now remotely diagnose and consult patients using telecommunication technology. There also need to be patients who are actively looking to get consulted and diagnosed by doctors remotely. There is an automatic selection bias here. Usually, the most experienced doctors do not have the time for telemedicine nor do they want to take the risk of reputation-loss caused through remote diagnosis and consultancy. Furthermore, patients with chronic illnesses/conditions should not be consulting a new doctor over an app for a first-time consultation — it is just not healthy. Agreed that it is convenient but is it honestly the best step for your health? We don’t think so. So basically, we were planning on encouraging patients to seek sub-standard healthcare because it saves them time.
Don’t get me wrong. It could work wonders for a large segment of the population with one-off problems and acute illnesses. But 62% of the disease burden for Indians aged 15+ is chronic. In other words, once you graduate high school in India, there is a greater chance of your next disease being chronic than acute. Unbelievable! Who knew? Ironically enough, WHO (World Health Organization) knew. So we agreed that chronic patients should not engage in telemedicine for their first consultation with a doctor. Many will but it is probably not the best solution and — every single doctor we spoke to agreed. So what next? We spoke to patients to see what they needed. It’s not rocket science and it’s definitely not a stroke of brilliance. It is all about listening to your ‘potential’ users and offering them something they really, really want.
Getting into the head of the consumer
A patient is typically looking for discovery and then access during recovery. Discovery of a doctor to provide the treatment and then access to the doctor to ensure that the treatment is proceeding smoothly. Practo does the discovery amazingly well. Hats off to them because a patient can seamlessly access 500,000+ doctors throughout India in a matter of minutes. But what about access during treatment? Patients repeatedly brave through Indian traffic with their thick medical files, just to wait for hours at their doctor’s clinic. All this for a quick follow-up question or to show a new report?! Often, they send their drivers in their cars to hand-off their reports and wait to hear back. Patients incessantly text/call/whatsapp/email their doctors. They share reports and request prescriptions but often receive the same old response, “please come in to the clinic” or “doctor is busy with another patient right now”.
However, never does a chronic patient replace their doctor because of longer waiting times — they just don’t (apart from second opinions of course). Fear of unfamiliarity trumps frustration of impatience every single time when it comes to health.
So what do they really want?
A typical patient wants to easily communicate with their EXISTING doctor. The patient wants to share reports, save reports, ask for prescriptions and not have to carry files and wait at the clinic. Waiting rooms are the worst. For DocTalk, I have been spending a lot of time in them before meeting and onboarding doctors and despite not being a patient, I still feel nervous and anxious. It’s like waiting to take an exam without knowing the syllabus. I know that I am not the only one. If you are like me — here. Thank me later.
A typical doctor wants to be able to provide the best quality of care to patients. They want to track patient progress. They want to have patient reports and history at their fingertips so that they know exactly how to respond to a remote query. They do not want to sift through emails, texts, calls and whatsapp messages. Simultaneously, they do not want to lose out on consultation revenue because of patients asking follow-up questions remotely.
DocTalk today
As discussed, we strongly considered 2 ideas — first was an “uber for doctors” model where a patient could contact a new doctor and now finally DocTalk, which allows patients to easily communicate with their doctors with all the integral tools. Throughout our ideation stage, we asked patients 2 questions — 1) would you want this product? and 2) would you pay for this product? While both models (uber for doctors and DocTalk) received about equal number of ‘yes’ for the 1st question, DocTalk significantly outscored the other model when it came to question 2. The first model of course has its merits — especially for acute diseases and one-off patients (our friends at JustDoc are doing a great job!) — but it takes time to garner the trust and comfort with a new doctor that you meet over an app. Chronic patients often cannot afford to waste that time.
That is how we came onto the idea of DocTalk. A mobile platform to safely save and share medical reports, easily connect and speak with your doctor and seamlessly ask for post-consultation feedback and prescriptions. I hope our journey and thought-process from a typical telemedicine play to the current version of DocTalk helps many think of their own journey. This does not mean that our journey is complete — far from it. Maybe 6 months down the line, I will be talking about how the idea evolved from this to something else entirely. However, it will be one heck of a journey.
Read about our successful Y Combinator application experience in our next blog post — “How we became Y Combinator Fellows”
‘It feels strange writing a blog post that very few will read, about a new company that is just a couple months old, on a blog that barely exists, but blogging about a new company is like taking photos — they are useless at the time you take them because you can see the reality you are photographing and the photos therefore don’t add much. But as time passes, they become more valuable as they capture a moment that will never return.’
We are excited to share this journey with you. We will publish our progress, thoughts, deliberations and ups-and-downs. We truly hope that this blog will be more of a dialogue than a monologue and invite you to share your thoughts and ideas with us. Click ❤ below to follow this blog for updates! Lets make healthcare simpler together.
If you do have 3 seconds to spare, please download DocTalk (currently Android-only) and share your thoughts. Give us your feedback and we will, I guarantee you, take it seriously. Like us on Facebook as well. Share the ❤.
We are inspired by Gary Vaynerchuk’s blog, PG’s essays and Kilometer’s journey. We have learned so much from them and hope to implement those takeaways at DocTalk. We highly recommend all our readers to read those as well.