Question

To the extent that all market participants have better information, economic efficiency is improved and prices are closer to costs for the products and services bought by consumers and for the supplies and equipment bought by firms. Thus innovations that improve information to patients and/or providers, such as by making price and quality information easily available, have an economic value to consumers. Use of the Internet benefits consumers in a variety of ways. What are the different ways the Internet can increase value to consumers and to health care providers and health plans? The Internet/e-commerce can increase efficiency for both providers and health plans in several ways. What are the likely effects of the Internet on health care competition?

Answer 1

There are number of ways in which internet is helpful to the consumers.

Some of the ways the Internet can increase value to consumers are:

1) NUMEROUS OPTIONS : The very first benefit is the number of options that are available to the consumer be it colour, quantity, style etc.

For eg : A shoe maker has number of colours to offer on the same product, so the consumer has the option to select one of his choice.

2) COMPARISON SHOPPING: It is human nature to checkout several products and then choose the one he likes, but with the method of visiting the market and turn out to every shop one by one, it consumes a lot of time and is not convenient enough, but the internet has made is very easy as the consumer can compare the products sitting in home itself on his device that too in a short span of time without going anywhere.

3) OBTAIN QUALITY PRODUCT : A consumer can check the reviews for a particular product before buying it and then make a choice of buying or not , this facility of internet marketing can never be available in a normal market.

4) 24/7 ACCESS : Normal market may open for 11-12 hours but is not so with the internet market as it is available to you every single hour and you can shop with your choice of time .

5) PROVIDES FULL INFORMATION : The consumer gets the complete information of the product he wants to buy so that he can differentiate between several products and make a descent choice. A normal shop or market is never goig to do this for you .

Ways the Internet can increase value to healthcare providers

1) INCREASED ACCESS TO CUSTOMERS: A doctor or an healthcare expect can use the internet to do the marketing of his product via a blog or a website as there are number of doctors avalaible in the market but the internet helps the consumers reach the best one and inturn help the doctors to market themselves.

2) HOME DELIVERY OF MEDICINES : The best part of internet is the home delivery as a consumer does not need to reach the market for the medicine and in turn it helps the healthcare providers as well because home delivery is convenient so there are large number of costumers relying on it therefore increasing the sale.

3) HOME BASED TEST: Also the healthcare professional can give home based test of a disease which is inturn liked by the customer itself so the ease of home based test is going to increase the tests done by the consumers as they are lazy in travelling.

EFFECTS OF INTERNET ON HEALTHCARE COMPETITION

1) UNLIMITED PHARMACEUTICALS : There are number of pharmaceutical companies that prepare medicines but consumers are very choosy they are going to select the one with good quality as well as nominal cost, so it is one of the effects on competition as the companies with not good ratings are not going to get the orders for sure.

2) UNLIMITED DOCTORS : The number of doctors today is increasing at a very fast rate, there are doctors for every disease so there is possibility of patients demanding a specialised doctor rather than a general one, so with increased use of internet the competiition for doctors has also increased at a greater pace.

3) UNLIMITED PATHLABS : We have large number of pathlabs in our country some offering nominal charges while some charging very high, so the customers can choose accordingly which one to go for. hence the compitition for the pathlabs is also very high.