Bengaluru, March 06, 2016: I was at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet conference in San Francisco yesterday and the topic of next 3, 5 and 10 years was brought up. First a little bit about the conference. It was being held in the Palace hotel a historic landmark in San Francisco. I had the good fortune of sitting in the front row and listen to some amazing and brilliant people. One of the key notes was moderated by GS President and COO Gary Cohn with Sheryl Sandberg, COO and Dave Wehner, CFO of Facebook. That brings me to the topic of next 3, 5 and 10 years brought up by Sheryl. 3 years is strengthening the current business, 5 years is messenger, WhatsApp and search and 10 years will be all about changing the world by connecting 4 billion people and ability of technology to improve lives including cancer detection and autonomous automobiles. This got me thinking. Healthcare is really where the most pronounced difference in improving people’s lives will show up. I believe that we are missing out on something very important.
There are three major trends happening around us.
The way people consume healthcare and providers connect with patients is rapidly changing with new technologies arming consumer with information like never before.
Mobile devices are more personal, more powerful and more sure than ever before. They are indispensable for doctors and patients alike and they are compatible with privacy regulations.
Cloud processing, predictive analytics and machine learning technologies are ideally suited to healthcare.
Sikka Software is already powering a massive ecosystem in healthcare economy with a free platform that connects to over 96% of the market (400+ combinations of practice management systems and financial systems) in the $250 billion non physician non hospital (retail healthcare) marketplace. The apis of the platform are used by and ecosystem of 32 suppliers and potentially thousands more who want to provide apps to the dentists, audiologists, optometrists, veterinarians and others. Sikka makes money by a simple per month per practice toll booth model for providing this seamless access to a potential market of over 600,000 healthcare providers in US and 2.1 million such providers worldwide.
As of this writing Sikka platform is processing over 4 billion interactions a day for 17,000 practices, with approximately 95,000 licensed providers and last year processed close to $5 billion in transactions. The platform is free and once installed because of any of its 36 apps, of which Sikka builds four apps, it doesn’t have to be reinstalled again. The company has gross margins higher than 80% because the variable cost of adding another office is steadily approaching zero.
There are other unique trends in the marketplace. With Sikka ecosystem currently servicing over 18.2 million patients, some trends are clearly visible. Millennials are becoming drivers of the world economy and taking over from the baby boomers as leaders of the spending. Millennials according to ibtimes, world of dtc marketing and ZocDoc are avoiding seeing doctors. 80 million millennial generation depends more on self diagnosis and attempting to treat themselves than any other generation according to Communispace (now C Space). Millennials are the largest group of smartphone owners and adoption is growing according to Tech Crunch and according to Wired magazine, millennials want their healthcare providers to connect with them on their terms, in the modes they find most efficient. Stay tuned for more on this topic.
Corporate Comm India (CCI Newswire)
