Many established Internet medical enterprises have reported mass layoffs. Chunyu Doctor, which was founded in 2011, has experienced false news of bankruptcy, while Baidu Doctor, which was launched in 2014, was shut down on April 1 last year. Many Internet medical enterprises will go relatively difficult, and the industry has been the existence of natural pain points also have a direct connection.
First, the mismatch of doctor-patient resources makes patients not enjoy the convenience brought by the Internet when they actually seek medical treatment. Second, the supervision and security system is not perfect, and it is difficult to find the responsibility in the case of medical accidents, and the traditional management methods and opinions are not applicable to the field of Internet medical care; Third, frequent exposure of doctor-patient disputes makes it difficult to maintain doctor-patient trust and hinders the platform from establishing a good reputation. For example, the protection of patients’ information security and privacy, after all, some diseases are labeled as discrimination, and doubts about the level of doctors, arbitrary charges and so on have also become the butcher to destroy the doctor-patient relationship.
In addition to the pain points in the model, the failure of many Internet medical models to open profit channels is also a huge obstacle to development. If the mountain remains unchanged, Internet medical may lose the opportunity to continuously inject capital and fall into the crisis of unable to maintain operation.
Counting the various pain points of Internet medical treatment, we can not help but sigh with the difficulty of Internet enterprises to get through offline, but at the same time, we can not deny that there are many opportunities for Internet medical treatment, thus giving birth to various models. For example, haodai.com, a comprehensive service platform, and Jianke, a medical e-commerce platform, also have service platforms focusing on vertical fields, such as Xinyang beauty.
The operation of Internet medical platform focus is different, the degree of popular with capital is different also, including the vertical field of psychological counseling online in A few years ago began to be capital, such as simple psychological 2016 millions of dollars A round of funding, warm psychological xue barbarian millions Pre – A financing, beginner’s mind sitting room complete millions angel round. Then, what are the advantages of online psychological consultation in the field of Internet medical treatment?
Light mode helps online psychological counseling to win a world
Compared with many heavy models in the Internet medical industry, online psychological counseling has found some breakthroughs with lightsome appearance.
First, the mode is lighter. Different from the heavy operation mode of many comprehensive Internet medical platforms, online psychological consultation focusing on vertical fields has a lighter operation mode. Firstly, online psychological consultation, as its name implies, is mainly based on online consultation, with diversified ways of consultation, such as text, voice and video. Most of them are small and medium-sized platforms, so the pressure on platform maintenance is not great.
For example, psychological memory, users can consult mental health problems on the APP, watch psychological live broadcast, pour out their worries, through the introduction of the APP, comments directly understand the level of consultants, and micro chat, psychological circle, psychological testing to help users ease their mood.
Second, consultants use their professional knowledge to communicate with patients online, in order to confirm the psychological status of patients and then psychological counseling or advice, so almost no professional medical equipment is involved, to avoid additional costs in this area.
Thirdly, because the communication between doctors and patients is mainly online, the consultants on the platform are mainly part-time. In this way, excellent psychological counseling experts from all over the country can gather on the platform, which solves the problem of unbalanced distribution of high-quality medical resources, and also makes the operating pressure of the platform lighter than that of offline clinics.
For example, the comprehensive One Psychology platform has more than 6,000 consultants registered, which has high requirements for the qualification of the consultants, and the consultants are mainly from the first and second-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.
Second, the social element. Some online psychological counseling platforms also add social elements, in addition to doctor-patient communication, platform users can also communicate, such as comprehensive platform, psychological, psychological record, etc. This mode allows users to interact with each other to share their frustrations and encourage each other, which can also help improve their mental health.
However, Internet medical platforms such as Haodai.com and Kingdee Medical only focus on consultation and communication between doctors and patients, which may lack in-depth communication. However, many diseases require long-term treatment, and doctor-patient relationship also affects the recovery of patients. In-depth communication can help doctors understand patients’ conditions, and promote doctor-patient relationship so that patients can cooperate with doctors for active treatment. Therefore, Internet medical platforms should try to integrate social elements.
The breakthrough point, online psychological counseling is still difficult to bypass the pain point
Although the online psychological counseling platform reduces the development burden with light operation mode, and its enhanced social elements make the platform more human, which can improve the doctor-patient relationship and adjust the user’s mood to a certain extent, there are still many problems in the online psychological counseling platform, hindering its own development.
First, the level of psychological consultants is uneven, and “cheat” more. According to iMedia Consulting, the number of e-commerce users of spiritual services in China exceeded 3 million in 2016, and it is estimated that the number of users will exceed 40 million in 2019. As the scale of users continues to expand, it can be seen that online psychological consultation is in great demand, but what about the actual situation of psychological consultants corresponding to it?
Online data show that the number of national second and third level psychological counselors is also increasing year by year in China, but the third level psychological counselors only need to have a certain degree, and through formal training to reach the standard number of hours to obtain the certificate of completion can be certified. This can extend a question, in the face of different degrees of patients, low-level psychological consultants can cure patients?
Both traditional psychological counseling institutions and Internet platforms are increasing year by year. The number of the former is in the majority, and most full-time practitioners are in offline institutions, while few are on online platforms. In addition, the industry’s employment situation is not optimistic, less than 5% of college graduates engaged in psychological counseling industry, combined with the psychological consultant doping moisture, and give priority to with part-time online psychological consultants, thus it can be seen online psychological consultant’s professional level and quality is uneven, some patients with psychological consultants, professional level is not pass even when experiment, And some of the use of learned fur knowledge to cheat patients on high fees, these are extremely lack of professional ethics behavior.
Second, it is not easy to establish doctor-patient trust, and the therapeutic effect is limited. Different from the traditional face-to-face consultation, online consultation allows patients to speak freely about their heart problems, and can also play a certain role in easing the knot in the heart. But the Chinese acceptance of psychological counseling is not high, especially when so many news, film and television information visit “hypnosis”, “electric shock to treat Internet addiction” and “in love with consultant” events appear in people’s horizons, for psychological counseling and lack of correct cognition, a preconceived bad impression, psychological consultant is a lack of trust, especially online consulting, The trust gap between doctors and patients limits the effectiveness of treatment.
, moreover, to achieve the best effect of the treatment of psychological counseling in addition to the consultant’s own professional level is higher, the consultation will also play a key role, based on the patient’s privacy protection, communication will hide, and face to face communication can let the consultant to better determine the patient’s actual mental state, can better late for psychological counseling and guidance.
However, due to the lack of natural face-to-face diagnosis scenarios, online psychological counseling cannot accurately judge the psychological state of patients under the mode of text and voice communication, which increases the difficulty of actual treatment. Even in the environment of video communication, the therapeutic effect is affected by the interference of the patient’s environment, lack of trust, unclear video effect and other factors.
Third, profits are uncertain. Not only online psychological counseling is facing this big problem, but many Internet medical platforms are also in this dilemma. On the one hand, due to the particularity of online psychological counseling, such as patients worried about useless treatment will be cheated money, consultants worried about cured patients but the other party does not buy it, around the “pay before consultation” or “consult before payment” problem, the charging mode perplexes both doctors and patients.
On the other hand, generally speaking, the charge standard of online psychological counseling is 150-1000 yuan per time or per hour, while the actual charge is related to the experience of consultants and treatment effect, most of the charge is still around 300 yuan, in addition to the platform will take part of the commission. If the patient decides that the treatment is not working well and abandonsthe platform, the treatment is terminated and the consultant is not rewarded for the treatment sessions.
In many problems hindering the development of online psychological counseling at present, online psychological counseling should be how to break through the bottleneck?
Only by building barriers of trust can we have a bright future
In order to break through the barriers of online psychological counseling, it is the key to establish the trust barriers of doctors, patients and platforms.
First of all, the professional level of psychological consultants should be guaranteed. Since the medical industry, employees must have professional ethics, be responsible for patients and patients’ privacy protection should be responsible.
Psychological consultation itself is different from the traditional treatment, the main in patients with psychological counseling rather than to simply drug treatments, and much more online counseling made between doctor and patient and a layer of virtual diaphragm, so consultants, professional level is to safeguard, had actually good treatment effect, to get the patient’s trust and recognition, Only in this way can the good reputation of consultants and the platform be established, so that the platform can have the prerequisite for sustainable and benign development.
Secondly, the trust relationship between doctors and patients should be gradually established by combination communication mode to improve the therapeutic effect. For example, simple communication with text or voice first and no charge, after several times of communication, let the patient have a sense of security, and then through the form of video communication to understand the actual psychological situation of the patient and charge appropriate treatment fees, and then symptomatic counseling. Simple forms of communication can allow consultants to initially understand the general situation of patients, and at this stage, no charge can let patients put down their doubts about the level of consultants and worry about being cheated of treatment fees. Mutual trust also promotes follow-up treatment in the later stage.
In addition, the platform can also add a mutual aid group module, the use of artificial intelligence technology for intelligent matching of users, so that patients with the same type of psychological problems can talk to each other and encourage each other, but also play a psychological counseling role for patients.
Finally, establish the credit medical treatment system. Due to the particularity of online psychological consultation mode, there is a trust problem between doctors and patients, which hinders the development of the platform. The establishment of credit medical treatment system can solve the age-old problem of “charging before consulting” or “consulting before charging”.
Second, through the system to make practitioners more transparent, can also play a role in regulating the professional ethics of consultants. Alipay’s credit medical system is a good reference model. If the platform has the financial strength to build its own credit system, it can also cooperate with Alipay and other platforms with credit mechanism to share the credit system.
Although said in the Internet on the business road, online counseling also failed to bypass the shortcomings of medical industry, the Internet counselor level, mode of doctor-patient trust, profit significantly, but in security under the premise of psychological consultants, professional level, broke the consultant, patient and platform after the trust of the obstacle, it may still be a broad prospects for the road ahead.
Article/Liu Kuang public account, ID: Liukuang110