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Comment by joeguilmette | Hacker News Reader

i dont think marketing to end users is the way to go. like someone said, no one cares about an emergency until they are in one.

market to hospitals. get integrated into their website. when someone calls their ER, make sure the nurse tells them to register on the website.

i think going white label is your best bet.

but yea, this is probably the best "Ask YC about my idea" i've seen since i've joined. you're not selling ER software. you're selling software that helps people wait in line.

think of other markets that could use these tools, and then sell it to them as well.

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I moonlight as an ER nurse as I finish my Software engineering degree next summer. I've worked in ER/Critical care for 15 years, and I've worked at over 25 hospitals as a contract nurse, and while your idea sounds good on paper, it's a medical/legal nightmare.

How fast you see a doctor in to an ER is not about being on a wait list. It's about how sick you are. If you're close to dying you get in right away. If you're not, we see you as soon as possible. Even then, it's not first-come first serve. And, if you're not here, you're not on the list, and there are no reservations.

And, I can't tell you how many people think they don't have something life-threatening and end up dead. And, there are many people who think that their illness is life threatening and it's not.

All it takes is for you to place one person on a wait list who ends up dead, and you're having a number of long talks with a law-firm. I'm not trying to be a hater, or flame you. I'm the last one to discourage an entrepreneur, but I'm really concerned someone will end up dead, and you'll have a big mess on your hands.

Please, rethink your business idea.

haha, iamelgringo, you beat me to bring up these comments. let me add on a bit to what you've already said.

hospitals are not just run as businesses, but they also need to serve the public. as such, you also have ethical and social concerns. there are a several substantial problems with your idea:

-promotes inequality of care based on money. this will likely turn out to be a huge legal issue.

-the decision of something being life threatening should not be determined by patients, but by health professionals.

-substantial change to hospital behavior. the act of creating and incorporating reservations to the ER system will likely be a shock that hospital administrators will not appreciate. (just look at how long it took for doctors to move from beepers to PDA's and cell phones, and also look at the adoption of electronic medical records which is still less than 18% of all doctors) making hospital staff jump through new hoops will increase the resistance of using your technology.

please do not take these comments the wrong way. your idea could work, if you tweaked the business model around hospital constraints, and nothing specific is popping up right now. perhaps other areas where waiting in line is a pain that people will pay for?

Try to sell this service to government agencies where usually the wait times are ridiculous. Personally I would feel weird registering online for a visit to the ER. I'm either sick enough and I want to go there NOW or I'm not that sick and I can just see my regular physician when he has time.

White label would be much easier, but that's shifting all the marketing effort (and most of the reward) to the hospital, which I'm not ready to do. Building a new unified brand is difficult, but I think it will be best for the company (and best for the users) in the long run.

For me, the $25/user is the endgame, profit-wise; for the hospital, the $200-$1k marginal profit from a new insured ER patient that would have otherwise gone to another hospital is the endgame. Marketing to their current patients is good, but not fantastic; the real benefit is in bringing in new patients.

Thanks for the ideas.

I think you might be a bit too ambitious.

1. Your target audience is difficult to reach (rich enough to pay $25, not rich enough to see a doctor, not willing to wait in line AND needing a visit to ER).

2. You're asking a lot from the hospitals (you collect patient data, you offer a no charge guarantee).

3. You're only getting $25 per successful transaction (needs to scale a lot).

On the other hand, you've already 'sold' your app as a white label. You have a reference and you can demonstrate that there's value for the hospitals.

Sell annual white-label licenses and you can built a very profitable company.

this is sage advice. it doesn't have to be entirely white label, but i dont feel like you're going to have much success marketing directly to end users.

if you're into branding though, remember, you are not making software for ERs, you're making software to help people wait in line, and your first market is ERs.

think about it.

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