We see the modern provision of health and care within the concept of a service system as “a configuration of people, technologies, organisations and shared information, able to create and deliver value to providers, users and other interested entities, through service”.
Once finalised the mICF will facilitate the exchange of relevant information for health and wellness between users and the system, both benefitting from this exchange; the user in acquiring predictive recommendations that assist in improving health and well-being; and the system in obtaining additional valuable data that, once anonymised, can be used for future analytics and benefit the population as a whole.
To enable both project success and execution efficacy, modern yet established lean start-up and agile commercialisation techniques will be used by the software company members in the consortium (See Table). The mICF partners have extensive experience with these methodologies. Specifically, a first market segment and economic buyers will be engaged early in the process to provide disciplined, in-market experimentation in the form of successive Minimum Viable Product versions to ensure a convergence between the assumptions of the consortium team and actual requirements that will address pain points in the market. This tight feedback loop will help ensure that when a product status is reached that it is a fit for the market or at least for a first scalable market segment.
The value-creation process enabled by our product will therefore combine the relevant parts of a smart service system, “People, Process and Technology”. The current status of mICF in the commercialisation lifecycle can be considered as being in the later stages of innovation. To transition to the incubation phase a target market segment – our “patient journeys” on different test sites – have been identified for disciplined, in-market experimentation to iteratively align assumptions with market feedback. Once a scalable, differentiated offering, with paying customers, has been proven in which an assumed value proposition has been confirmed by a sufficiently attractive market segment, the business can be prepared for scaling by using appropriate “acceleration” techniques. Realistically a successful grant will enable the team to take a few offerings with high impact towards the end of the incubation phase.
Table 1. Overview of lean start-up and agile commercialisation techniques
Technique/Tool | Description | Outcome |
Agile Commercialisation | Disciplined in-market experimentation | Matured offering confirmed by several paying reference customers ready for scaling |
Value Constellation Mapping | Mapping out ecosystem, personas and value exchange | Clear understanding of players in market, interactions, user-buyer, technical buyer and economic buyer and value exchange with us through sales cycle |
Portfolio Analysis | Market segments as a function of Market Attractiveness and Competitive Position | Market segment to focus on |
Scenario Analysis | Identification of top variables and risks | Informing selection of focus market segment |
4Ps of Marketing | Strategy for Product, Pricing, Promotion and Distribution (Place) | Holistic market strategy informed by agile, experimental process |
Executive pitch | Listener-train-of-thought to cast value proposition in the most optimal way for a potential customer
| Articulating value proposition from client’s perspective rather than ours |
Miller-Heiman Blue Sheet Analysis | Best Practices Executive Sales Technique | Essential commercial preparation for executive-level entry into an account albeit for first reference customers |
Innovation organisation | Structuring a start-up business within an existing organisation to avoid it being destroyed by “Performance Engine” | This will likely be a start-up business within an existing organisation which is extraordinarily difficult without the right organisational structure |
Provocation Based Selling | Harvard executive sales technique to move budget outside of the normal budget cycle | Shorter sales cycle at C-suite level |
Scaling Techniques | “Sales Play”, Doblin and other techniques | Acceleration when leaving incubation phase |
Salesforce.com | Most popular and practical Customer Relationship Management (CRM) package | Professional pipeline management of early reference customers |
Intellectual Property Management | Enhancing competitive position with reference to Portfolio Diagram |
The viral uptake of the mICF solution, driven primarily through social media marketing techniques, will not only ensure the required big data for personalised predictive care, but also the critical mass allowing patients’ voices to be heard in ways never imagined before. This could be the catalyst needed to rapidly reform health services and health professions education (5) as the ecosystem of this new business model arises.
The dissemination of mICF will not only entail economic buyers (for-profit big data analytics) and viral uptake (non-profit personalised clinical and social care decision-making), but will also result in numerous academic publications decurrent from a whole research program developed around the diverse patient groups and locations where the app will be used. The mICF has the potential to trigger the development of a new personalised, predictive health care science and industry globally.