A first hand digital community platform around real world healthcare, that is what QUOMI is.
As venture designers, this was an opportunity to create value and impact in the healthcare space, with a founder who has his heart in the right place.
We started with his vision for QUOMI. A vision that was then systematically translated into a blueprint, product map, design and build of a digital community platform for the entire value chain of the healthcare space. The proposition was centered around healthcare champions and unlocking not only professional value but also personal value for the medical community, a community that spends all its waking hours in making the world a healthier place. This was ideated, strategized and designed as a platform where talents, skills and institutions across the world converge to enrich, engage, advocate and solve.
QUOMI stands for Quantum of Medicine International. A gathering of quanta, i.e. the members, and only together do they make health care. Health care does not work if not as a huge team. Physicians, doctors can’t do their job without the pharmaceutical industry, nurses, IT specialist, engineers, even cleaning services and other personnel.
Making social work for those who get the world back on its feet, day in and day out!
Let's examine the problem it sets out to solve
Staying healthy is probably the most cherished human desire.
Healthcare was once a single-chain, supply driven industry; but now, it is edging towards becoming a multi chain & demand driven industry, one that is tech-charged, location-independent & information based. From cure based interventions it has moved to preventive care and more. Today health & wellness is not an occurrence, it is a way of life.
The consumerism in this space is bound to explode, through digital penetration via smartphones, wearables and mobile apps, into a new, $20 billion market. There have been remarkable innovations and digital platforms for the demand side to address the needs of patients and health consumers. These have made remote healthcare accessible on digital devices and data available for better decision making and predictive interventions.
But what about the wellbeing of healthcare professionals? The ones who actually heal the world.
There is a need to champion the cause and needs of these frontier warriors, who after all, keep society's most productive economic units - human beings and their happiness index high. They do it under the Hippocratic oath and work under the most challenging conditions or should we say, expectations? It is a profession where anything short of full recovery is not forgiven. And where miracles and utter devotion are but expected as the norm by beneficiaries.
It is a high pressure, time poor job, let's face it. And managing careers, upskilling, practices, mobility, keeping up with technology, loans, legislations, seeking avenues of professional growth makes it more complex.
This has been the starting point for us at NYUCT Design Labs, while working with QUOMI, on venture designing and building this platform. From 0 to 1. Building a network multiplier that cares.
The product roadmap
Venture Design as a practice blends tools and methodologies of business management, design thinking, ideation & creativity. The first point where strategy hits the road is the solution and designing its architecture, so that it solves the problem at hand and can continue to do it at scale when required.
While typically a lot of times, solution firms start off with building the product itself and loading it with features, we had to breakdown our problem into first the bitable parts and go about systematically designing the solutions. But even before this, there were sessions with the founders, getting into their heads and seeing the problem through their eyes and the eyes of fellow healthcare professionals.
Our product core was arrived at after iterations, discussions with the founder and what we call as design research where we examine the market through 5 lenses.
A Healthcare champions’ community platform (that includes the entire value chain of providers) with two parts to it – a B2C model that looks at professionals and a B2B version which is modified for institutions like clinics and hospitals. Both would add professional and personal value through specific features and modules. This would seek to differentiate itself through the experience, quality of community and a refreshing accent on privacy. To enrich work and life remained the central proposition.
Wellbeing = Work + Life
QUOMI was envisioned as an integrated community platform for all health care champions across the world. To help enrich life and work. It brings together professionals from across the healthcare value chain - doctors, surgeons, physicians, consultants, care givers, nurses, medical assistants, students, innovators and knowledge seekers onto a common platform. A "we for us" platform.
Having been designed and co-engineered with founding healthcare professionals, this helps keep the platform relatable and real world. The founders and their life experiences bring a great degree of empathy and understanding about what the HCPs seek and savor as value. This made design thinking this venture easier.
Wellbeing = Quanta + Mobility
Health care does not work if not as a huge team. QUOMI is the Quantum of Medicine International. Physicians, doctors can’t do their job without the hospitals, clinics, the pharmaceutical industry, nurses, IT specialists, engineers, support services and other personnel. Without these entities - the Quanta working together - people wouldn't have seamless integrated health care. A gathering of this quanta, i.e. the members working together, in a networked manner makes what is health care today.
The second issue is of mobility. There is a large imbalance between the availability of both professionals and services across the world with large under-served regions, thereby making the quality of healthcare vary widely across geographies. The platform intends to help in driving mobility of talent and professional skills & services through this digital network.
Wellbeing = Personal + Community
QUOMI is motivated by both community good as also personal well being & professional growth of healthcare professionals (HCPs). The needs of the individuals and professionals here, being as critical as the goodness for the community they serve.
The platform is baked with a strong privacy principle that begins with ensuring the protection of data and privacy of members. And yet it is a community around their fingertips, bringing what matters to them right to their desk and mobile. It is user centred.
QUOMI presents a place where a healthcare professional can stay up to speed with what's new and hot in healthcare, share news and updates, access the best jobs & internships, meet focus groups discussing brave new developments, access savvy opinion polls and discover must-attend events round the world. Here members network, seek, share, consult, crowdsource, collaborate, upskill, unwind and ideate. And oh yeah, discover some unique services that seek to enhance both work and life. There is an exciting product roadmap that the platform promises to unveil as we go along.
QUOMI as a platform and business was venture designed from 0 to 1 and beyond by NYUCT Design Labs. This included strategy, ideation, product development, UI+UX, design, branding and build. An interdisciplinary team that includes design thinkers, design doers, creators, coders, brand architects, content specialists, studio professionals worked with the founder and his team to bring this vision alive. from concept to market.
About NYUCT Design Labs
NYUCT Design Labs sees this venture design engagement, right from ideation, strategic blueprint, design to coding, building and co-engineering with the founders both as a demonstration of distributed innovation as also a wonderful classroom for us. This opens our eyes daily to exciting new possibilities, with exciting new founders and businesses wanting to build amazing products and ventures.
There are many hats, many roles, many functions and stages involved to create and grow a venture or start up. And the entrepreneurial road is often lonely and challenging.
As a founder, capital is just one of your concerns. There are many things to handle other than capital.
From undertaking research, validating ideas, envisioning a future, creating a business plan, managing registration & legalities, putting a team together, keeping them motivated around a purpose, arranging for work tools and applications, building the product, deciding on the tech stack, making products/services desirable with design, branding & marketing, getting the right pitch deck, marketing the venture right - there are numerous functions and steps involved while starting up your venture. And that too with odds and time stacked against you.
This is where Venture Design steps in. To help founders, entrepreneurs and businesses manage their bandwidth while building the amazing.
NYUCT Design Labs is a Venture Design house. It operates at the intersection of ideas, design, entrepreneurship, technology, and imagination, to help clients build the better, make the amazing. The firm helps blueprint, design, build and market ventures, brands, innovations & IPs. Should you have a venture in mind or just a crackling idea on a napkin and want to bring it to life, feel free to give us a shout. There just might be an adventure in the waiting. Call it innovation smart-sourced.
As an interdisciplinary design lab, we also ideate, design, prototype and build our own IPs, speculative products and platforms. We call this as speculative design i.e. lab creating a venture or business to ensure better and surer futures.