The following is a sponsored post for RIMEDIO. Beyond sponsoring 33c to start this conversation, the words, ideas and thinking below are mine alone.
One of the challenges I faced maintaining a medical practice was the integration of the players necessary to do business. Vendors, suppliers, reps and payors. Too many reps wanted to talk to me and access to medical supply vendors was such that practical comparison was nearly impossible. I had little control over what was coming and going.
I had the chance to preview a bold solution for what I faced. It’s a virtual B2B marketplace for health care called RIMEDIO. I recently had the chance to look under the hood and I haven’t seen anything that resembles this.
eBay meets Amazon
RIMEDIO is essentially a holistic platform of dialog, bidding, negotiation and permission-based marketing. A digital bazaar of sorts. It sees itself as a type of meta-community of doctors, payors, and manufacturers. Patient advocates have a place at the table as well.
Think eBay meets Amazon sitting on LinkedIn.
Doctors can define who they want to hear from and under what terms. Industry folk can approach doctors and doctors can approach one another. A physician group in Grand Rapids needs exam table paper in bulk. They ask for a bid. A joint manufacturer is assembling a focus group for the development of a new product Prospective orthopedic surgeons can define what a half day of their time might be worth. Patients could assemble to negotiate a group rate for an elective procedure.
All of this is done in RIMEDIO’s regulatory compliant environment that facilitates interaction while mitigating fear. Of course it’s probably alot messier than it sounds but the idea is really interesting.
The leading question I face from industry representatives is, ‘how do we reach doctors in the connected age?’ The conversation is typically brief because few of us know what doctors want. The beauty of RIMEDIO is that it represents a liquid, multi-faceted platform that can bend and pivot at the whim of the medical community. This is important given how bold the concept really really is.
Collaborative consumption in health care
President Richie Bavasso sees something different for health care. Inspired by the Collaborative Consumption movement and with a background in hospital administration, medical education, software development, he is a cross-platform creative who understands the complexity of the health care business environment. I suspect that RIMEDIO will serve as something of a market-based petri dish. And it may emerge as something quite unimaginable. But it appears to be a platform that drives and thrives on that kind of uncertainty.
Remedio may ultimately represent a space for collaborative health care services. The Collaborative Economy is a nascent economic model where ownership and access are shared between people, startups, and corporations. Collaborative models of business are appearing in hospitality, auto rental, and fashion/retail. Health care may be ripe for this kind of innovation.
The concept of RIMEDIO is like nothing I’ve seen. It will be fun to watch it evolve after its November release. The company plans to test the waters in Eastern Europe and the US followed by a global march.
Rich welcomes lively engagement on innovation and disruption in healthcare and can be reached via LinkedIn.