Tech Startup Forward Launches Concierge Medicine

By

ROLFE WINKLER

Jan. 17, 2017 6:00 a.m. ET

https://www.wsj.com/articles/tech-startup-forward-launches-concierge-medicine-1484650802?mod=djem_jiewr_ES_domainid&mg=id-wsj

It’s said that the company’s in the corner of downtown San Francisco, so we can guess that the source of innovation should be startup in garage.

The inventor is Adrian Aoun. And it’s own by  former Alphabet Inc. Executive.Investors of this include Khosla Ventures, Founders Fund and First Round Capital, not to mention such prominent angels as Alphabet Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt and Salesforce Inc. Chief Executive Marc Benioff.

The innovative challenges for this business are as follow:

1. It should find a way to educate people to believe in a cold machine more than a experienced doctor. Labor is more expensive than machines in most of the cases. There should be some features that only the machine can do which doctors can’t. This would be the best selling point.

2. The fee is too expensive compared to others. Forward charges 150 dollars a month while others who can do similar jobs just charge 200 dollars a year. The difference between Forward and the cheap ones should be emphasized, like the pharmacy on site and sensors to monitor health.

3. The privacy of the patients’ data is always a problem. Artificial intelligence needs to be fed with great amount of data. However, nowadays many people dislike giving out their own data to machines, which would lead to lack of data for machine to learn and grow.This is a vicious circle. So convincing patients to give out their data at the first place is of great importance. Privacy clauses should be claimed.

4. Adopting this new thing demands a long learning process.patients who come up to  special digital scale in the center of the waiting room would probably have no idea how this thing works and how to use it. So a nurse or tech guy who is familiar with it would be necessary to be there and help. But this violates the convenience brought by the new machine. If it takes more trouble, why don’t I go straight to the doctor but stay here when mess around with the new machine that I don’t know of.

5. From my perspective, the selling point of this would be its accuracy as well as its convenience. Machine is always more precise than human and faster than human. Conveying these concepts to new user is of importance. Suggestions would be setting up the new machine in some flagship hospital as demonstration. Meanwhile broadcasting what’s going on here to the entire world as long as teaching them how to use the machines. Target the initial customers group on young middle-class people from 20 to 35 who love new technology and are willing to try it.