When the patient is back on the site, he or she will receive a message from a U-Healthcare physician outlining the treatment plan or a request for more information. The interactions between the UHealthcare patient and the U-Healthcare physician will continue asynchronously until the U-Consultation process is completed. When the patient is online, he or she will receive a real-time UConsultation from a U-Healthcare clinic or physician that is always on and responding immediately.
As a further enhancement, virtual U-Healthcare clinic or physician sites can include a quick link to U-Healthcare pharmacy chains coordinated with the patient's residence, a toll-free telephone number, and U-Healthcare customer service representatives to help U-Healthcare patients get through the U-Prescription process.
In the end, U-Healthcare patients will get U-Consultations based on consistent, relevant, and continuous medical information and the data in vital signs and physiological status which will provide the early-warning system in medicine and meet the conditions of general wellness.
Placing this in our U-Healthcare strategic framework, the e-business structure has been conceived as a business-to-consumer service model.
U-Healthcare value propositions are many, especially when compared with traditional doctor visits. For example, they have greater convenience, faster accessibility, more efficient patient data collection and processing, more intelligent knowledge management capability, improved payment and cost billing processes, and time savings for UHealthcare physicians in interacting with U-Healthcare patients. Like traditional office visits, U-Consultation sessions will provide valuable information flow from U-Healthcare patients to U-Healthcare physicians and vice versa.
U-Consultation is also an affordable and economical solution for both nonemergency and emergency problems from the standpoint of U-Healthcare patients, regardless of their spatiotemporal conditions.
We will now look at how different U-Healthcare strategies support various UHealthcare business structures. The discussion will then be extended to include U-Healthcare value propositions.
U-Healthcare Business Structures
U-Healthcare business structures are much different from e-healthcare business structures. In other words, e-healthcare business structures consist of the traditional healthcare product and service providers, using the Internet. They do not limit themselves to just marketing on the Web. In fact, they often primarily use traditional advertising and marketing strategies in order to meet their business goals and marketing objectives.
The virtual U-Healthcare business models and services, in contrast, use the Internet to build a virtual organization and physician - an independent, profitable venture that exists mainly on the Internet. Although there are still some obstacles, for example data standards, information privacy and confidentiality, and transactional security, it seems that most organizations are likely to benefit directly from transacting business on the Internet, especially small and medium-sized healthcare organizations.
U-Healthcare business structures provide convenience and a larger or more specialized selection of products to U-Healthcare patients and necessary information on vital signs and physiological status that competitors cannot imitate. And they use networks, including Body Area Networking (BAN) and Personal Area Networking (PAN), to produce superior economic benefits for UHealthcare patients and U-Healthcare clinics or physicians, and offer higher quality information, more economic benefits and more convenience than competitors.
U-Healthcare business value propositions define the relationship between U-Healthcare provider offerings and UHealthcare patient purchases by identifying how the U-Healthcare provider fulfills the U-Healthcare patient's needs across a range of tasks, functions, and activities.
In U-Healthcare services, U-Healthcare patients can include not only individual purchasers such as patients, caregivers, or physicians, but also large group purchasers such as healthcare retailers, hospitals, or health maintenance organizations. Large group purchasers can also include communities or U-Communities such as senior groups, virtual communities, sociopolitical advocacy groups, or even multinational corporations.
U-Healthcare providers perceive value arising out of reduced consumer search costs, product and service promotion costs, and business transaction costs. Similarly, U-Healthcare patients perceive value arising out of reduced product and service search costs and transaction costs. In addition, customer-focused U-Healthcare services also provide improved shopping experiences and user convenience.
Healthcare institutions have been slow to migrate to automation and invest in Ubiquitous technologies because of their lack of understanding of U-Healthcare strategic frameworks. Additionally, the tremendous cost of major system planning and implementation in migrating to managed care has left many healthcare organizations struggling just to keep the lights and heat on. To invest in multi-million dollar computing hardware and infrastructure development, knowing that the system will begin moving toward obsolescence before it is even implemented is a terrifying proposition. Moreover, after seeing many of their competitors take the initiative in making significant investments in technology infrastructure and not realizing any significant returns over several years, health managers and administrators have been very hesitant to plunge into U-Healthcare strategic development.
U-Healthcare Strategic Opportunities and Challenges
While some data demonstrate that UHealthcare investments have reduced the cost of doing business, demonstrable returns on U-Healthcare have not been widespread, perhaps because hospitals are just beginning to experiment with the Internet and because few truly effective and integration-friendly systems are available to U-Healthcare providers.
Most traditional hospitals and health maintenance organizations (HMOs) are burdened with old and inflexible legacy systems that were created before many of today's Web programmers were born. Major healthcare information system vendors and companies are still scrambling to adapt their proprietary mainframe information systems to the Web.
To make the most of the Internet, however, both traditional and U-Healthcare providers need to look beyond the shortterm challenges of cost cutting and staff reductions to embrace long-term vision and commitment to the opportunities offered by U-Healthcare initiatives. A successful U-Healthcare strategy needs to emphasize the primary benefits that UHealthcare offers to the business goals of the organization. Customer acquisition and retention, customer satisfaction, relationship building, and provision of better quality healthcare are but a few of the many benefits that await U-Healthcare providers with the proper vision.
The cornerstone of the U-Healthcare industry is the U-Healthcare physicianpatient relationship. U-Healthcare clinics and physicians make up the front line of U-Healthcare and are the key gatekeepers to U-Healthcare service delivery systems for U-Healthcare patients. Since the days of Hippocrates, the relationship between patients and physicians has been close and very personal. The Internet and Ubiquitous technologies are poised to change this relationship forever; it is hoped that this change will be for the better. U-Healthcare patients will be planning to change health plans and physicians in order to fulfill their desire to receive U-Healthcare services anytime and anywhere.
