Suitable Funding Options, Impact Of E-commerce On Customer Buying Behaviour, Impact Of Ethical Practices On Online Medical Business, Importance Of Innovation And Challenges Faced By Marketing Manager In Online Medical Business

The proposed new venture or start-up which we are choosing is the Medical Decision Network (MDN). Medical Decision Network is our brand name which will serve people medical services online through an APP. Medical Decision Network is providing Medicines at the doorstep with free home delivery facility and at discounts. Reminder system facility is also there for our regular customers and we have collaborated with expert doctors. Our vision is to be the primary healthcare service provider in the market segment. And our mission statement is we want to bring health care services within the reach of every individual across the world.  

1. Self- funding: – Self- funding is also termed as bootstrapping. Self- funding is the innovative way of financing a new venture. In this type of funding, the entrepreneur can invest himself from his savings and can get fund from friends and family members to contribute. This will be easy to raise funds and moreover, family and friends are flexible with the interest rates.
2. Crowd Funding:- Crowdfunding is one of the most popular ways of funding a new venture. Crowdfunding is like taking investment, contribution, loan or pre-order from more than one investor at the same period of time.
3. Angel Investors:- Those individuals who have the surplus capital or cash and have a keen interest in upcoming new start-ups. Angle investors work in a team of networks so that they can research the proposals before investing in any new venture. They can also offer to counsel about their business along with capital.
4. Incubators & Accelerators:- Incubators & Accelerators can be considered as a funding option for an early stage business. Every year in major cities these programs help hundreds of new start-up. Incubators are like who nurture the business providing training and network to the new venture. Accelerators are the same to an extent, they help to run and take the business to success.
5. By winning a contest one can get funding’s: – An increase in a number of contests can help to expand the opportunities for fundraising. It motivates entrepreneurs with business ideas to set up their own startups.
6. Funding through Bank Loans:- Banks provide two types of funding for start-up. One is working capital loan and another one is funding. To run one cycle of revenue-generating operations working capital is required. Whereas funding from the bank will include the normal process of giving the details of the business plan and along with the project report on which the business is going to work.

As per (Ming- Tsang Hsieh, 2014), the acceptance of the internet has been made shopping online and common. Amazon is the most popular online retailer. When managers deliberate that how shopping system has changed, the major influences are the low price of the product and easy web searching. The ability of a corporation to control its employee’s perceived risk is important to its progress in company growth. Low supposed risk leads Amazon to be one of the biggest online retailers. These make the customer feel comfortable and consider Amazon suitable and dependable.

• Business to business (B2B): – Business to business healthcare e-commerce includes transactions and interchange of information among vendors, hospitals, doctors, and insurance agencies. The end consumer i.e. patient is not directly involved. The major focus is on the supply chain of business to business e-commerce. B2B emphasis on three goals of consumer buying behavior improves efficiency, reduce costs and give real information about the patients.
• Greater Choice: – Through e-commerce customers have a wide range of products and services. With the help of e-commerce, the consumer can choose goods from anywhere in the world. E-Commerce has given greater choice to consumers by guaranteeing that they can get what they want.
• Business to consumer (B2C): – Business to consumer is an electronic online marketplace formed to inform healthcare users about medical products and services. The aim of B2C e-commerce is to save the future treatment money by better educating customers or generate revenues for consumers. Voice over internet protocol provides consumers the chance to connect with medical services over the phone by sitting at one place.B2C e-commerce provides easy accessible attractive sites with consumer buying behavior and organizing electronic messages and group chats. They also provide privacy feature to safeguard against theft of personal data of the patient.
• E-Commerce saves time: – The procedure of collection and payment in online purchasing is very easy and quick. There is no obligation of going to the store physically. For Example: – Doing online shopping through Amazon by sitting at home or at the office and getting clothes delivered at doorstep within 2- 3 business days.
• Prices are lower: – Products have lower prices when we purchase online this are because of consumer purchases goods directly from the manufacturer via online. Therefore the lower prices of products and services raise the competition.
• Direct communication with customers: – Through the online purchase of products the consumer can directly communicate with the manufacturer. This process helps manufacture to get feedback instantly and directly from the customer.
• Data security or privacy: – E-commerce provides information security and privacy for patients in healthcare services. To effectively implement ordered access to information they allow access to only selected fields of patient details which are digital signatures, encrypted key- based verification and biometrics.
• Medical Standard: – Medical standard like XML (Extensible markup language) makes it easier for healthcare services partners, hospitals, doctors, patients, manufacturers, suppliers, wholesalers, machines to use data efficiency. This e-commerce system has provided relief to healthcare organizations. This technology updates these systems to allow a change in workflow and healthcare management.
• Wireless Technology: – Wireless technology helps the health care services by creating the network which is easily accessible to all the patients for either sending or receiving information around any location.
• Comfort: – E-commercegives a large convenience for consumer buying behavior as the major factor for online medical services. It permits the customer to buy online anywhere and anytime which proposes consumers to attain services online 24 hours a day, 7 days a week from home or anywhere.

• Of Couse, as an entrepreneur of the organization, we believe that ethical practices create an impact on business because to take decisions in a business we need to consider all the aspects like geographical, cultural, social, economic, etc.  
• In layman terms provide the technical information. Use proper word processing software to evaluate the desired readability needed to understand the details.
• Evade using scientific jargons. Most of the individuals are accessing the website; therefore, they may get difficulty in understanding formal healthcare technology.
• When patients using the AAP avoid having automatic links to other websites popping up on the screen.
• Give references to the patients so that they can go and search for more information about the AAP. To confirm that ethical standards are maintained the patients should check with references on the APP.
• Lack of associated records to the online pharmacies based in global countries is not obligated to deliver documentation like a patient package.
• The ethical issue against the consumer (patient) education regarding information. Healthcare professional maintain that patients lack adequate education and training to adequately understand much about the healthcare information. Proper consultation opportunity should be there with online purchase of medicines so that patient gets ease in medical services. A healthcare professional is always available online to answer queries from the patient.  
• There should be Patient privacy and confidentiality.The most important ethical practice and legal issue is the protection of private patient medical information. Communication between doctor and patient should be strictly confidential. Specific systems of online healthcare accountability act or HIPAA define that information only that can be released.
• The recent global issue i.e. Ebola virus has put major stress on the healthcare provides to safeguard themselves from communicable diseases through direct or indirect interaction with a suffering patient. When the patient’s medical history is not provided to the medical staff then ethical practices and legal issues can arise.
• Balancing safety and quality with efficiency is the biggest challenge facing by the healthcare system services.
• Using social media to give medical facilities to patients presents a number of ethical issues that need to be addressed. When trying to reach patients through social media, whether it is for public health or for public health nursing in the same should maintain confidentiality and privacy that are accessible.
• Language barriers are the major ethical issue in online medical services. In different parts of the world English that is written and spoken are different. There are many ethical online medical issues for a marketer that provides details to patients in English that is only understandable by local people. Therefore it is advisable that we use basic and simple language so that we can have the less amount of cross-cultural confusion.
• The most popular issue is similar drug name that the healthcare industry has started to encounter over past years. The unethical situation that the online healthcare services can have is that medicines using names similar to popular brand name products. Patients are mostly not alert about the correct brand name of the medicine they are only confirmed about the drug or salt name of the medicine.  

Innovation is the procedure of generating and implementing a new innovative idea. This is the process of taking new ideas and modifying them into meaningful products, services. These meaningful ideas are the outcome of creativity. Innovation is the skill to combine thoughts in a proper way to create useful ideas. Therefore innovation provides new concepts for quality development in companies and puts these ideas into action. Change and innovation are related to each other, even though they are not equal. Innovation includes new and better ideas.

The significance of Innovation: –

• Innovation takes benefit of the world’s entrepreneurship movement.
• Innovation follows advance technology.
• Through innovation, we can adapt to the changing environment of the workplace and trends.
• Innovation responds clearly and quickly to individual expectations and needs.
• By innovative we can expand global connectivity.

Strengths: –

• Information and Experience: – Innovation major strength is giving knowledge and experience. Innovation has the power of skills and new ideas to develop a professional request at suitable cost and high quality.
• Creativity and Innovation:- Innovation has a brilliant project group that can build an eye-catching user interface (UI).  
• Reputation:- Along with the knowledge in the market, innovation has developed a good reputation in the organizations.

Weakness: –

• Experience: – In innovation, we do not have experience with the change system. Therefore, sometimes it becomes difficult because of lack of experience.
• Brand: – The new application should need to modify with powerful brands in the same segments of the environment.
• Budget:- Since this is a new innovative application. Therefore the cost incurred in the process will be higher than another system.

• Challenge of Cost Management: – Caring of the financial aspect of the medical business is difficult. This is because getting compensated from insurance companies is a very monotonous task. Payment of salaries to employees, to manage the stock of medicines, updating equipment’s, and many other financial problems that can cause a challenge for marketing managers.
• Pay structure challenge: – To get payments from patients online is the biggest challenge. This is because patients pay through internet and face so much of problems in their payment due to lack of knowledge of the Internet.
• EMR/ EHR and IT requirements: -Healthcare services charge many vendors too much to store their patient data or information because they are more concerned about their security of the patient information. The challenge to use healthcare operations like Big Data to improve operations as well as modification in technology.