5 ms·

I still think this idea is powerful. Not because I believe it transforms healthcare, but because it informs consumers a bit more. That’s what seemed to get you

I still think this idea is powerful. Not because I believe it transforms healthcare, but because it informs consumers a bit more. That’s what seemed to get you excited in the first place. There are a few paths I see still: a. Assuming you own a database, expose your dataset as an API. Consider possible consumers. Open source it, and monitor the usage. Who’s using that data. b. Cold message a few folks on Linkedin from pharmaceuticals that your algo says has high clinical success. Can you “recommend” them? Do they see value. Maybe you have a research tool on your hands. 3. If you can keep your website alive, focus on SEO and gain traction with more users and play that out. Write blog posts, use affiliate marketing, and grow users. But don’t add new features. Just maintain what you have. Try that for a year at least. What did you learn? I think the toughest thing here is knowing when to stop building the product. That’s what stands out to me as your demise. The doctor was spot on, and those are the kinds of things you want to hear. It just means looks somewhere else. Writing a doc beforehand with potential opportunities is always a good idea, but it’s never too late. Disclaimer: I do product at MEGACORP and love product strategy.

utopian3 7y ago
> I do product at MEGACORP and love product strategy. Where should one go/read/listen/watch to learn more about product strategy?
- catchmeifyoucan 7y ago
  Biggest rec. is to talk to people who have done something interesting or catches your eye. I always email people asking how they did something - people usually are really friendly and willing to share. Websites like Indiehacker, stratchery are good. Would also recommend the innovator's dilemma if you're at a big company. There are also a few videos on Youtube by CNBC on products of the past - and I've enjoyed those.
bduerst 7y ago
I was thinking the same, except OP's product seems more like a feature for an EMR platform and less a standalone product. The only downside is that sharing this information may open up the hospital to more liability - i.e. a patient takes an opiate instead of an NSAID and then blames the hospital for recommending the opiate to them because of how much more effective the opiate is at treating pain in clinical trials.
rossdavidh 7y ago
Another possibility: how many people would be willing to donate a few bucks a month to support it? Call it the public radio model. You won't get rich, but you might pay for upkeep and servers.
- achillean 7y ago
  Donations are extremely difficult to make work. I tried it after getting decent traction in 2009 and didn't receive a single donation to cover server expenses. I'm guessing with Patreon things have gotten a bit easier but for a business I would highly advise against going down the donations route. In general, small payments also tend to take up a disproportionate amount of your support time compared to larger transactions so you have to be prepared to deal w/ that.
  - rossdavidh 7y ago
    One big difference post-Patreon is that I no longer think "my small regular contribution is just going to get chewed up in transaction fees", since Patreon does just one transaction a month and then divides it up among several people/organizations that I support. But, it would not be my first business model to try, just an alternative to "we built it but now let's just shut it off".
wayoutthere 7y ago
This is a classic case of "it's not a product, it's a feature". This is true of almost everything in healthcare that's software-related: it's only useful if it's integrated with the EMR. This is why you never see software startups in healthcare. In this case, similar functionality (drug recommendations) exist within EMR systems. Except the recommendations are issued by other doctors and medical researchers, not some ML algorithm and it works transparently with the pharmacy management modules. Moral of the story: don't get involved with healthcare startups unless you know the structure and economics of the industry. They are very different from consumer / business tech.
- rsp1984 7y ago
  There's barely anything more frustrating than a fascinating discussion on HN and then folks start kicking around lingo and acronyms that you can't even Google because they could mean a million things. So please, have mercy and cure my ignorance and explain what EMR means.
  - CompleteWalker 7y ago
    Best guess is Electronic Medical Record... I had to google it. https://healthit.ahrq.gov/key-topics/electronic-medical-record-systems https://healthit.ahrq.gov/key-topics/electronic-medical-reco...
  - wayoutthere 7y ago
    EMR is basically anything and everything related to the operation of a doctor's office and/or hospital. Think scheduling, patient records, ordering lab tests, sending prescriptions to the pharmacy, billing.... all of it. It's what your doctor is furiously typing data in to during your visit. They also include a lot of functionality designed to, among other things, make sure your doctor doesn't write you prescriptions for a drug cocktail that will kill you. It's spoken about as a monolith because that's how it's sold -- there are maybe a dozen platforms in wide use (which are then usually customized by a system integrator for a big hospital). They do have every option you could possibly think of. I'm not criticizing you here (you're not trying to do a medical startup), but anyone who is trying to do a medical startup needs to know a whole lot about EMR systems -- more specifically how they are bought and sold -- if they want to make any traction. All medical software flows through the EMR, and they are closed platforms by design.
rconti 7y ago
Yeah, I've gotta wonder how much money it can possibly take per month to keep running, if you stop paying people to add data to it.
nikita2206 7y ago
Maybe you could open source it, and with the help of people from the community get sort of grant from Google or Amazon or say digital ocean so that this could work without you having to pay for servers? All the work that contractors were doing, people could do that for free. The only thing is I’d license this thing so that it can’t be used commercially (except for research)

utopian3 7y ago

> I do product at MEGACORP and love product strategy. Where should one go/read/listen/watch to learn more about product strategy?

catchmeifyoucan 7y ago
Biggest rec. is to talk to people who have done something interesting or catches your eye. I always email people asking how they did something - people usually are really friendly and willing to share. Websites like Indiehacker, stratchery are good. Would also recommend the innovator's dilemma if you're at a big company. There are also a few videos on Youtube by CNBC on products of the past - and I've enjoyed those.

bduerst 7y ago

I was thinking the same, except OP's product seems more like a feature for an EMR platform and less a standalone product. The only downside is that sharing this information may open up the hospital to more liability - i.e. a patient takes an opiate instead of an NSAID and then blames the hospital for recommending the opiate to them because of how much more effective the opiate is at treating pain in clinical trials.

rossdavidh 7y ago

Another possibility: how many people would be willing to donate a few bucks a month to support it? Call it the public radio model. You won't get rich, but you might pay for upkeep and servers.

achillean 7y ago
Donations are extremely difficult to make work. I tried it after getting decent traction in 2009 and didn't receive a single donation to cover server expenses. I'm guessing with Patreon things have gotten a bit easier but for a business I would highly advise against going down the donations route. In general, small payments also tend to take up a disproportionate amount of your support time compared to larger transactions so you have to be prepared to deal w/ that.
- rossdavidh 7y ago
  One big difference post-Patreon is that I no longer think "my small regular contribution is just going to get chewed up in transaction fees", since Patreon does just one transaction a month and then divides it up among several people/organizations that I support. But, it would not be my first business model to try, just an alternative to "we built it but now let's just shut it off".

wayoutthere 7y ago

This is a classic case of "it's not a product, it's a feature". This is true of almost everything in healthcare that's software-related: it's only useful if it's integrated with the EMR. This is why you never see software startups in healthcare. In this case, similar functionality (drug recommendations) exist within EMR systems. Except the recommendations are issued by other doctors and medical researchers, not some ML algorithm and it works transparently with the pharmacy management modules. Moral of the story: don't get involved with healthcare startups unless you know the structure and economics of the industry. They are very different from consumer / business tech.

rsp1984 7y ago
There's barely anything more frustrating than a fascinating discussion on HN and then folks start kicking around lingo and acronyms that you can't even Google because they could mean a million things. So please, have mercy and cure my ignorance and explain what EMR means.
- CompleteWalker 7y ago
  Best guess is Electronic Medical Record... I had to google it. https://healthit.ahrq.gov/key-topics/electronic-medical-record-systems https://healthit.ahrq.gov/key-topics/electronic-medical-reco...
- wayoutthere 7y ago
  EMR is basically anything and everything related to the operation of a doctor's office and/or hospital. Think scheduling, patient records, ordering lab tests, sending prescriptions to the pharmacy, billing.... all of it. It's what your doctor is furiously typing data in to during your visit. They also include a lot of functionality designed to, among other things, make sure your doctor doesn't write you prescriptions for a drug cocktail that will kill you. It's spoken about as a monolith because that's how it's sold -- there are maybe a dozen platforms in wide use (which are then usually customized by a system integrator for a big hospital). They do have every option you could possibly think of. I'm not criticizing you here (you're not trying to do a medical startup), but anyone who is trying to do a medical startup needs to know a whole lot about EMR systems -- more specifically how they are bought and sold -- if they want to make any traction. All medical software flows through the EMR, and they are closed platforms by design.

rconti 7y ago

Yeah, I've gotta wonder how much money it can possibly take per month to keep running, if you stop paying people to add data to it.

nikita2206 7y ago

Maybe you could open source it, and with the help of people from the community get sort of grant from Google or Amazon or say digital ocean so that this could work without you having to pay for servers? All the work that contractors were doing, people could do that for free. The only thing is I’d license this thing so that it can’t be used commercially (except for research)