Mobile in the Brazilian Universal Health System!

Mobile App and a 165 million health users! Is it a good opportunity?

The Brazilian universal health system is very, very large and as most of very large organizations, it needs urgent improvements and innovations. A simple 1% improvement means hundreds of millions of US dollars in savings per year! There are several characteristics of the Brazilian SUS that will be virtually impossible for me to explain simply because I can’t understand myself! My explanation lays on corruption and illiterate! But I know the problem is quite complex! But a system this big has great opportunities to offer in Mobile App. So let´s focus on our Mobile solution!

In Brazil several solutions are being developed aimed at the high end, rich customers! There is a good reason for it! They are 20% of the Brazilian population or 40 million potential customers!

I prefer to develop a solution that embraces the 165 million SUS users and the 40 million rich will follow! As in all my Mobile App that I develop, this must be FREE for users and monetization solutions must come from innovative solutions, which does not cost my users a cent! In a post doctor visit health solutions! There are at least two classes of users in our solotion, patient and doctors! I know the more users’ class you have, the bigger nightmare you are entering! But before seeing Fred Kruger, let´s read a bit more!

So first question: What value must I bring to these 165 million SUS users in my Mobile App? If you ask this simple question: “Would you like to buy good quality drugs as cheap as possible?” I bet you are thinking this cannot be asked in a validation since it is obvious that everybody wants cheap and quality drugs! But don’t forget that for these 165 million SUS users this IS CRITICAL! So I got the very first thing that would bring value to customer, finding cheaper and good quality drugs!

If my Mobile App can find cheaper drugs, why does it cannot find everything else that a patient needs after seeing his doctor? Exams, Glasses, Hospital exams, Laboratory services, etc. This took my brain power for quite a while, but I got it! IT CAN!!

So if value to patients is solve with several improvements, What about doctors? Accordingly to IHO, if you take 9 or more drugs you have 100% of having a drug interaction problem! OK, 9 drugs?? Wait until you get to 70 plus years and lived a poor life and 9 drugs is nothing! Our solution will help doctors when prescribing and it will check on real time if what has been prescribed has bad drug interaction with anything that patient is taking! There is more added values to doctors in our solution! One of the most innovative is a virtual nurse on your smartphone! This virtual nurse will reminds you automatically which drugs to take, when and how often! This nurse will help doctors to know if you are following the prescribed treatment or not!

So value to patients and doctors we had covered! How do we get users? That is the magic of a health system! People go to hospitals, health center, pharmacies, etc. So all we need is to set up a marketing campaign based on banners and flyers located at the entrance of these places! The places will be our partners, so they will allow us to do it!

A significant number of potential users are elderly citizens that most do not like or know how to use a mobile App! How to reach them? Proxy care taker! An elderly citizen, in most cases in Brazil, has a young parent (grandson, nephew, etc.) that has a smartphone and can help in the health care of his elderly parent!

So, values and getting users are covered! Even that I am not saying all! So let´s move to the real issue, MAKING MONEY!  Like I said before, FREE for Doctors and Patients!

Our Mobile App will truly take the patient from where he/she is to the pharmacy entrance with the best prices for the same drug! So we will charge a fee to the pharmacy for the service done! We will do the same to all companies in the health sector that join the service! Why would they join? In Brazil, like most countries, certain drugs can only be sold with a prescription! Our solution puts the prescription on the cloud! So as the pharmacy sells the drugs, it needs to access our system to link the cloud prescription to link it to the sales invoice, thus ensuring all involved that the sell was done correctly! Our system will know the value of the sell and charge the pharmacy accordingly! In Brazil, very large pharmacies companies have e-commerce solutions, BUT they cannot sell controlled drugs on line due to lack of a prescription! Our solution solves this problem!

So what is the monetization and scalability potential of it? Brazil’s health system is about 9% of our GNP which makes over 200 billion dollars per year! Drugs alone represent over 30 billion dollars!

By the way, I was forgetting, I have a patent! So IP is also covered! I am setting up the team and in the near future our PharmaNet will be starting at Alagoas to grow to Brazil and other countries! 

My next post will in relation elections in Brazil! This year we elect the President, 1/3 of Senate, Federal and State Deputies and 27 Governors! God help us!!!

All the best,