Title Body Meta Description Meta Title Nid Summary All taxonomy terms Blog Image Image News Image Type Entity type Comment count Link text
How can I choose and compare private consultants?

The last time I booked a flight, I went on the net, and searched, compared services and prices and booked.... The last time I was looking for insurance I went on the net, and searched, compared products and services and booked.

So, if I want to see a specialist, book a scan, or visit a physiotherapist...why can’t I do the same for private healthcare?

Well the good news is that when the new HarleyStreet.com launches later this year, patients will be able to do just that...via the web or the new Harley Street App. But how will this be viewed by long established Harley Street practitioners who traditionally are loathe to publish how much it costs for a consultation and are reluctant to see a patient who cannot proffer a GR referral letter?

For many years, Harley Street based practitioners and services have relied on traditional referral routes and medical networks to bring them patients and customers. But patient behaviour in purchasing private treatment and services is changing. Patients have become consumers. The web and more recently mobile technology has begun to dominate our lives and the way we buy things. Harley Street and private healthcare is not immune to these changes and cannot ignore what is going on in the world around it. Why can’t a patient easily find out or compare what a surgeon charges for an initial consultation, or how many of a particular type of operation he or she carries out each year or...ultimately what the clinical outcomes are for that operation by that surgeon? The information is available in many cases...why not make it public? Would you buy a car without some idea of its safety record?

Harley Street doctors are losing out

In the international medical travel market, Harley Street has lost out to up and coming destinations across Europe and Asia that are eager to attract patients and are not afraid to promote and sell their wares. Prospective medical travellers can visit web sites comparing destinations, clinics and prices for consultations and surgery. But Harley Street, London and the UK as a whole play little or no part in this marketplace, relying on historical reputation and traditional medical networks to maintain patient flow.

Both in the UK and in the international market, the internet is creating a new kind of healthcare consumer who wants to know what they are buying and what they are getting for their money. Will the private healthcare sector in the UK respond to their quest for information?

This article was first published in Independent Practitioner Today.

89202 node 0
Google backtracks on plans for Google Health and the personal health record

Google has announced plans to “retire” Google Health in January 2012. It’s a blow to those in the healthcare business who had big ideas for using Google Health as the basis of a “global patient record” and who adopted the Google health record as the model for this. 

In 2007, at the launch of Google Health, Google stated: “By digitizing health records and giving control over them to the patients, they will be able to make better informed decisions. With health records stored in a central server, patients will be able to access them from anywhere, whether they move to a new city or are traveling while on vacation, so that, in an emergency, unfamiliar health care providers can get a comprehensive view of their health history” (Source: ABC news - Google Moving Forward on Health Initiative). 

In withdrawing the system, Google says that Google Health “didn't scale as we had hoped.... we’ve observed that Google Health is not having the broad impact that we hoped it would” 

So, what has driven Google to abandon Google Health and is there a message here for the concept of the “global health record” for the healthcare sector?

Here are some of the factors that have been put forward for the failure of Google Health: 

  • Slow rate of adoption: i.e. there wasn’t a market need. People aren’t that bothered about maintaining a health record online and couldn’t see it fulfilling a need. So, is there a need for a “global patient record” in the independent healthcare sector? Do we a need a system whereby a private patient’s record can be transferred from consultant A or hospital B to consultant C or hospital D in a common electronic format? The honest answer...probably not. There are few instances of electronic patient records which are exchangeable between multiple providers and multiple systems AND which gets used extensively. The “global patient record” is a great concept.....but a long way from reality.
  • No revenue stream: The problem Google faced was how could they monetise (and thus pay for) Google Health. They said they wouldn’t place advertising on the records. They considered aggregating the data and selling it on to pharmaceutical companies... but it was never going to achieve an economy of scale.
  • Complexity of the market: Many businesses and people get involved in the healthcare sector without appreciating the complexity of the market and the effort required to achieve adoption of a new concept. To make Google Health work, required Google to develop relationships with a multitude of stakeholders in the healthcare sector. 

So does Google Health’s demise open the door for Microsoft’s HealthVault? We can only wait and see.

For additional perspectives on why Google Health died a death:

89079 node 0
Can Google predict the future?

Who knows what's going on in healthcare? Who knows what conditions and disorders are causing people problems? Can the way that people use search engines such as Google predict the future? If you are a healthcare marketer, how can you use Google to inform your strategy? 

Google is a treasure chest of information about how people are behaving and what issues are concerning them. Google logs the online activity and search behaviour of hundreds of millions of users. It knows what you and I do on the web everyday. It often knows where we are when we’re doing that search. And from the data that Google collects, it can draw conclusions. And so can you. 

Predicting a flu outbreak

A good example of Google’s predictive power in the healthcare sector is Google Flu Trends. Google has realised that certain search terms are good indicators of flu activity. Google Flu Trends uses aggregated Google search data to estimate flu activity in a US state up to two weeks faster than the federal centres for disease control and prevention. 

At Private Healthcare UK, we use Hitwise to analyse search activity in the UK healthcare sector. Hitwise is an online competitive intelligence tool which monitors activity on over 1 million web sites every day. What does search activity tell us about the recent flu outbreak? 

  • According to the Royal College of General Practitioners, flu cases rose 45% during the w/c 20th December. Over the same period, Hitwise reported a 128% increase in the most popular flu related search term “swine flu symptoms”.
  • One of the most popular fast moving terms in this period was “swine flu symptoms in adults” rising by 61%.
  • Other fast growing searches were “flu treatment” (+509% increase) and “how long does flu last” (+55% increase). 

Can Google guide your strategy in private healthcare?

Analysing behaviour in the past and present is a guide to what happens in the future; analysing how people searched in the past and how they search now provides some insight for your marketing team that may help to direct your marketing efforts. 

Let’s take obesity surgery as an example. According to the Private Healthcare UK 2010 WebWatch report (download it for free), three of the top twenty most visited UK web sites in the Health and Medical sector relate to obesity, weight loss and dieting. Here’s what a few minutes spent using Google Insights for Search tells us about the way in which people use search terms related to obesity surgery: 

Five years ago, “obesity surgery” was a more popular search term in the UK than “bariatric surgery”. In 2011, the reverse is true.

Worldwide, you see a different picture. For example, in the USA, “bariatric surgery” has always been a far more popular search term than “obesity surgery”.

Over the last five years, the number of UK searches for “gastric band” has risen significantly to overtake the number of searches for gastric bypass”.

Searches related to obesity surgery are seasonal (I wonder why....). Searches for “weight loss” peak after Christmas. They remain high through to June but are significantly lower towards the end of the year. 

Spend some time exploring Google Insights for Search... it may give you some worthwhile insights into your marketing strategy.

89047 node 0

Pages

Powered by

LaingBuisson is the chosen provider of independent sector healthcare market data
to the UK Government’s Office for National Statistics.