How to Monetize a Content Driven Healthcare Website?

Doug MD Rheumatologist, Founder PainSpot.com, Assistant Clinical Professor

March 22nd, 2016

We have a well recognized and growing interactive symptom checker. Would like to partner or engage a company with experience in ideas to monetize the site. It is ideal for pharma ads, or for use in patient portals. I'm a doc and think I need a partner with experience in this arena to take it to the next level.

Matthew Keith President, PenFact, Inc

March 22nd, 2016

I suggest you contact Shadow Health and see if there is synergy with their product.

Larry Zolob Marketing & Consulting, business development, careers blogger, entrepreneur, advisor, org hacker

March 26th, 2016

It's pretty much an ad revenue model if you're getting traffic.

The good news is that it seems you have developed tools. That makes you more unique as you have a differentiated asset you can now think about how to monetize.

One thing to do is step back to understand the business you are in and the problem you are trying to solve. Hmmmm, self medical help. Problem, getting access to medical help quickly and conveniently without having to pay copays or whatever. Define the problem.

Next go on a journey to understand who else is trying to solve the problem and see where your businesses can fit. There are a bunch of companies starting up creating apps that give you digital access to medical help...sort of a virtual appointment to triage your healthcare problem. It's a big thing now both in the US and Canada where I am. Look these guys up and see if/how you can partner with them as a sensible step to achieve the objective the consumer is trying to achieve. Could be a service consumers can access if they purchase an in-app premium/upgrade to the base product. Apps will be looking for reasons to charge for a download or upgrade. You can help them if your product is the right companion.

Karl Schulmeisters Founder ExStreamVR

March 24th, 2016

I hate to be a killjoy and sound like I'm pitching our product - but having gone to your site (painspot.com) and played with it, I think you are in potentially a high risk status right now. while your caveat of:

Based on your answers, you are at risk of having one of the following conditions listed below.
Please remember there may be other conditions causing your pain that are not listed below.
Please print or save answers and discuss them with your licensed health care provider.

suggests the person consult a licensed health care provider, the prior step and the URL speak of a "diagnoses" - and that arguably makes your web site a Medical Device requiring at least 510k Clearance.

This is a tough area, and can be very expensive to get clarity on, since medical device consultants and legal advisers charge upwards of $300/hr with 8hr minimums. ClearRoadmap's Pathway tool (https://ClearRoadmap.com ) seeks to help you through this forest of regulations. If you would like to try it free for a week to see if it is right for you, please feel free to email me at karl.schulmeisters@cg-hg.com

We launched our product with the goal of helping innovators like you- and I think some fairly simple changes in your text and claims could get you back in the clear. But I'm not the expert here. The content on the Pathways tool was built by a former Entrepreneur in Residence at the FDA CDRH and it provides all the guidances and best practices in one place.

This is crucial because there are quite a few gotchas that aren't clear if you don't read the documents or follow the FDA analytics process in the correct order.

Michael Heiligenstein Marketing Manager

March 24th, 2016

A partner with marketing experience would be helpful, though isn't strictly necessary. I imagine the best outlets here would be any app that helps connect patients with doctors, as well as health insurance companies. When approaching them, it always helps to emphasize how many people you expect to see their ads / go through to their site/app. Hard numbers are great: how many users/readers do you currently have, how rapidly are you growing, how many you might expect to click through to your partner's site. As long as you're reaching out to partners that can help directly with the problems your users are having, you can also emphasize that this is highly relevant traffic and thus is likely to convert very well into actual business.

Frank Martinez Co-founder at Upstream Ventures LLC

March 23rd, 2016

Doug,

Let's have an offline discussion about this. We have an elegant solution for this purpose; especially for pharma ads.

Gracias,

Frank

Chris Datcu Senior Technical Architect at Blue Couch Digital

March 23rd, 2016

Doug, may I suggest you get in touch with interfacehealth.com? Maybe it's worth a chat. Feel free to message me if you need an introduction.

Joe Welfeld President; The Welfeld Group, LLC

March 27th, 2016

It really depends on whether this is a tool for patients or physicians. I am not a strong advocate of advertising (particularly pharma) since this does have an impact on credibility. I have worked with a number of startups on building relationships with larger networks in order to demonstrate value around current reimbursement initiative like ACOs and bundled payments. Would be happy to explore with you offline.

Sunil Modi Founder: Reachout: patient engagement app (chronic diseases), 1st yr adoption: 100,000 patients.

April 20th, 2019

Interesting website Doug. We are in a similar spot and I am happy to share my thoughts. There is certainly value in pharma ads and rightfully so. However, we are also discovering that there is value in pharma education as well. Being driven as a patient site, there are certainly more than one avenues open for you. I realize this question was posted a while back, but I am happy to discuss further should you be interested.

Thanks and good luck.

Sunil

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