Consumer Health Search: An Angle for an Amazon Black Friday Sale?
November 24, 2017
I read “How Consumers Search for Health Care.” What struck me as interesting about this article’s information was that the data reminded me of research conducted i 1986 by the one time commercial online giant Information Access, a unit of Ziff Communications. We developed the Health Reference Center, which was an innovative service at that time. A kiosk allowed a user to obtain curated information about a medical condition. I recall we placed these Health Reference Centers in libraries and a handful of forward thinking health care facilities. We did tons of research, and the product included a number of interesting features.
I matched the findings reported in the article with my recollection of some of the research we conducted as part of the IAC product development process. One finding which was decidedly different was the preference for millennials for convenience. If the data in the article are accurate, 40 percent of the millennials in the sample like convenience which translates to mobile usage and online scheduling.
Other data points were in line with the findings from three decades ago; for example, ease of use and finding solutions that would be covered by insurance companies.
What do these data suggest? Health care is unlikely to be able to deal with expectations for mobile scheduling and patient convenience. As for shopping around for a deal on a treatment or procedure, Amazon, not established health care providers, may be encouraged to enter the field.
Black Friday deals on nose jobs and hip replacements may sound interesting to the Bezos behemoth. Use an Amazon credit card? One might get some Amazon credits which might be applied to the next procedure. Prime cut?
Stephen E Arnold, November 24, 2017
Comments
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
