If somebody told you that people can get expensive treatment just because you’re studying, would you believe it? Though it sounds like something parents would say to their children to make them do their homework, this statement may be true.

Let’s take a more realistic approach: education technology (edtech) augments healthcare marketplaces in a way that enables students to learn and earn, health providers cover staffing demand, and patients get the medical service for less money. Still sounds impossible? 

In fact, it’s not. The size of the healthcare marketplace industry is already $336 billion, and it’s going to grow at a pace of almost 8% until 2030. Gaining traction at a meteoric speed naturally causes a ruthless competition within the industry. That’s why startups look for ways to leave the pack of pale faceless healthcare marketplaces behind. In this article, the JatApp team will share with you one of the untold ideas on how to make your healthcare marketplace stay out of the competition by adding edtech inside your product.

 

Global Healthcare Market

 

Healthcare marketplaces aren’t a silver bullet, but a reliable solution   

Making bold statements about the healthcare industry has been an important component of any politician’s election program for many years, but the relatable problems are not even close to the resolution. Nurse staff shortage and healthcare access disparity are two “evergreen sins” of the global healthcare system. For now, 86% of healthcare facilities face staffing scarcity, while 30.1 million of people living in the U.S. are uninsured and can’t afford even the basic health services. 

 

Health Workers Survey

 

 

Naturally, tech startups come to toot their horns and try to change the situation for the better. Needless to say, technology won’t revolutionize the healthcare industry dramatically, but such solutions as healthcare marketplaces can positively influence the situation with staff shortage and healthcare access inequality. Nomad Health, one of the biggest healthcare marketplaces today, already managed to onboard 250, 000 clinicians and helped healthcare organizations to cut 40% of staffing costs.   

So, how do healthcare marketplace work? The principle is simple: marketplace matches nurses looking for a job and patients that need a medical service. In such a way, patients can search for nurses according to a specific qualification, availability, years of experience, language/culture, and type of care. At the same time, nurses can find a job that meets their requirements in terms of salary, need to commute, flexible hours, and so on. 

 

How healthcare marketplace works

 

Every single healthcare marketplace startup can’t resist a desire to call itself a game changer, but in fact we have myriads of healthcare marketplaces that are almost impossible to differentiate. 

JatApp has worked on more than 200 projects, including marketplaces for various businesses, so we can confidently say that just a matchmaking feature won’t win you customers. That’s why it is the right moment to integrate edtech into your healthcare marketplace to create a unique value for the entire health industry. Let’s discover how. 

Edtech can make your healthcare marketplace special

If you want to nourish your healthcare marketplace with edtech, you need to aim your product at somebody who wants to learn and find a job in a clinic. Hmm…Who might it be?  Clinical students for sure! The research shows that lack of training facilities is one of the main factors that cause distress amongst clinical students, which means that your product can be an ironclad solution.  

It’s common knowledge that clinical students have to study much longer than students in other universities. Consequently, we have two problems: decreasing student motivation over time and financial challenges as students aren’t allowed to engage in a full-scale medical practice. 

A healthcare marketplace Grapefruit Health solves these problems in the following way. The marketplace recruits clinical students and provides them with additional training to ensure they’re able to perform basic operations such as injections, lab tests collection, patient education, physical examinations, post-discharge followup, to name a few. 

 

Grapefruit Health marketplace

 

At the same time, healthcare providers badly lack clinical staff to work on small yet important tasks to cover the healthcare needs and decrease service expenses of all populations. For instance, a healthcare company registered on the platform requires extra 100 nurses to process 10,000 patients. 

As for the patients who need to get the service faster and at a lower cost,  they have to sign an informed consent paper to confirm that they agree to get medical service from trained clinical students. You create a win-win-win situation: patients cut their costs on healthcare services, a health facility closes its staffing demand, and students get practice, earn money, and build good career prospects. 

 

How Grapefruit Health marketpalce works

 

Again, you may say that we describe some fantasy rather than a real startup. To make you feel less skeptical, just realize that Grapefruit Health gathered $650K at just a pre-seeding funding round. Beyond a doubt, investors are also humans, but they’re the last people who would romanticize startup ideas. 

Shake up the healthcare industry with a cutting-edge technology

We hope we’ve convinced you that combining a healthcare marketplace with edtech isn’t a bizarre pipedream, but a real opportunity to have an upper hand against your rivals. We’ve shared the idea of how a healthcare marketplace can leverage the power of edtech, and we also know how to bring that concept to life. JatApp has been developing marketplaces and edtech solutions since 2015, so we can provide you with our technical and business expertise to create a product that will survive the market competition. 

Other entrepreneurs are also craving for a genuine idea for their healthcare marketplace. So don’t wait for too long and be the first to leave us a note. We’ll get back to you as soon as possible.