Oct 13
2015
Health IT Startup: Doxy.me
In 2013, while searching for a telemedicine solution, Brandon Welch thought that his only options were expensive and complicated telemedicine systems or video conferencing solutions that were not HIPAA compliant. He wondered where he would find simple and free telemedicine solutions. He said he felt, “The world needed a simple and secure telemedicine solution that was freely available to all healthcare providers.”
So he created Doxy.me.
Elevator pitch
Telemedicine will revolutionize the delivery of healthcare by making it more convenient and accessible for patients to access qualified healthcare professionals, and reducing unnecessary expenses. Unfortunately, current telemedicine technologies are expensive and complicated to use, limiting its widespread impact on healthcare.
For telemedicine to change the world, we believe that telemedicine technologies must be simple and free to use. That’s why we developed Doxy.me — the simple, free, and secure telemedicine solution.
Product/Service Description
Doxy.me is a simple, secure, HIPAA-compliant and free telemedicine available to an clinician in the world. They can use the platform to provide care to their patients, or use it for clinical research or clinical trials.
Origin Story/Founder’s Story
Doxy.me was founded at the University of Utah by then Biomedical Informatics PhD student Brandon Welch while working on a research project within Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology. The goal of the study was to develop and evaluate a novel prenatal care delivery model that replaced several in-person prenatal care visits with telemedicine visits with pregnant moms from home or work. Initially, he wanted to use Skype or FaceTime for the technology, but the institution wouldn’t allow it because these popular and free conferencing solutions were not deemed to be HIPAA-compliant. So he set out to find a good, simple and free telemedicine solution. However, he was surprised upon reviewing HIPAA-compliant telemedicine technologies that the only options available were complicated and expensive; none were deemed practical to be used by patients at home. Being familiar with the technology, he set out to build a simple and free telemedicine solution. He first submitted the idea to a medical invention competition at the university and won the “Consumer’s Choice” award, and he used the winnings from the competition to build the first prototype of Doxy.me (which was used in the prenatal care study). Over the next year, he continued to improve the Doxy.me features based on clinician and patient feedback, but with a guiding principle of simplicity and ease of use.
Marketing/Promotion Strategy
Since it was officially released to the public, it has grown exceptionally over the past year with little marketing efforts. Networking with organizations and word of mouth has been the largest marketing tool.
Market Opportunity
Competitors include snap.md, telehealth.org and vsee.com. Market opportunity really focused on the fact there were no telemedicine solutions that were HIPAA-compliant, free and easy to use. This gave us a leg up on our competitors, as most other solutions require downloads, plug-ins, or are expensive.