1001 Startup Ideas – Social Network for Doctors

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What is the idea?

The startup idea is to establish a social network for doctors. The platform will connect doctors to discuss the symptoms and arrive at a diagnosis. It will also enable doctors to discuss the probable treatments and medicines for the patients. The social network will use hashtags and intelligent search as a tool for doctors to find topics.

Market Definition

According to getreferralmd.com, today, 24% of doctors use social media at least once a day to post or seek medical information according to Allied Health World.

According to US National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health:

• A survey of more than 4,000 physicians conducted by the social media site QuantiaMD found that more than 90% of physicians use some form of social media for personal activities, whereas 65% use these sites for professional reasons.
• And nearly a third of physicians have reported participating in social networks. However, both personal and professional use of social media by physicians is increasing;

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Jappreet Sethi

Co-Founder|YoStartups.com

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Competitor Analysis

There are various companies which are trying to connect doctors across the globe. Sermo claims to be a big social network for doctors and is strong across the US. Curofy is India's largest community of doctors. These platforms have mostly catered to one country alone and have not moved to create a truly global social network.

Pain Point & Target Audience

The target audience for this startup will be doctors across the globe who are looking to collaborate with their peer doctors.  Various kinds of diseases occur around the world, and it needs to be taken up in the doctor community for their awareness; also they can together come up with better diagnostic and cure. Till now doctors have been using magazines to remain updated, but that does not give real time information.

Value Proposition

This social network will not only provide the platform to doctors to discuss various diseases, their diagnosis and cure but also provide a platform to doctors to remain updated on any new and spreading diseases.

Business Model

The business will have two types of revenue streams:

a.    Advertisement revenue; and

b.    A premium subscription-based services for users which will enable them to directly interact with other users via chat or application based calling.

Way to market

The first step would be to make a sleek application and web platform where the Doctors can connect. The content on the platform should be easily filterable and searchable with various diseases, symptoms and its cure. It also needs to be noted that currently, all the platforms work on connecting doctors in one territory. This platform needs to make sure that it launches in one developed country and one developing country so as to ensure that the doctors in developing country can take advantage of the knowledge and advancement achieved in developed countries by connecting with doctors from those countries.

Milestones

The startup should make sure that it connects atleast 100,000 doctors in the first one year. It also needs to ensure that it encourages the doctors to inform the users of the platform about latest developments in medicine and unusual cases. This will help in building good medical knowledge repository on the website, which further attracts more users.

Investment Needed For Prototype

For testing & building the prototype, pitch for raising 100K USD from angel investors or incubators. Although there are no incubators which focus on social networking startups that we came across, but this kind of a disruptive startup can target incubators like 500startups and Y Combinator There should be no office rentals or salary payout; the entire budget should be apportioned for customer acquisition and technology.

Team Capability

You would need to have a tech expert to drive the technology and a doctor to create the perfect engagement and user drive on the platform.

Investors / Expert Take

This kind of a startup will have to show traction and successful implementation in a developing and a developed country. Sermo, which is the biggest social network of doctors so far has raised more than USD 50 million so far. In case you are looking at scaling or launching this venture, you can apply for our virtual acceleration program Excelrate on the Yostartups website; it will help you in streamlining and structuring your startup idea. We have limited scholarships and discount packs for deserving startups, depending on the strength of your application, you may qualify for a discount.