GOOD LUCK BABYLON @babylonhealth has set out a great vision for the future of healthcare but these are 10 reasons why they have an uphill struggle:👇👇👇
1: Project scope is unrealistic. Too many distinct components and too many moving parts. Doctor system, patient records, AI, clinics, tests, multiple geographies, etc. Even IBM would struggle to do this.
2. Lack of focus: with such a grandiose plan it is almost impossible to get any of the parts done properly. A sequential rather than parallel approach would work better
3. Huge expenditures and little revenue. If Babylon doesn’t continuously raise capital they will run out of money fast. And every round has to be at a higher valuation. This is a challenge
4. Team scaling too fast. Teams that don’t grow organically are much more likely to fail due to lack of strong company culture and effective communication lines. The vision generally breaks down and chaos reigns.
5. Overpromising. It takes a lot of hard work and time to build viable products or services. Throwing cash at a problem does not necessarily accelerate the results. Underdelivering is what generally follows.
6. Lack of understanding of the importance of clinical safety. In healthcare you have to follow the correct procedures. They may slow down innovation but without safety sooner or later you will fail.
7. Low margin, non scalable business model. Reselling doctors’ time or licensing a telemedicine platform to GPs are both low margin and very hard to scale.
8. Tech is not mature. Apps are huge (>100MB), often offline, data security still to be proven (no live third party integration as yet), AI not as good as claimed (see @TheLancet @DrMurphy11)
9. Overfunding. One of the most common startup killers. Founders go on a spending frenzy before product has been proven.
10. Major partnerships signed too early. @prudential $100M deal and @tencent are virtually undeliverable due to their complexity. Even if delivered they would require hundreds of people to make them happen.
