How to buy chickenpox, whooping cough and growth hormone in the online store
This article is a remake of the material a year ago, so a significant part of the text remains unchanged. But there is news in the development of the LAB4U project, which is worth telling the world. So, in the summer of 2015, an article “IT systems in medicine” was published at Giktims , the author of which visited a large BION laboratory operating in the b2b segment. My story is about how you can use the services of the BION laboratory with the great benefit for yourself using the LAB4U Internet service . We did not copy competitors, but developed our own business model, which is based on the principle of “minimum cost while maintaining high quality results”.
The first thought - why was there something to invent? Let's try to figure it out. Increasingly donating blood in a public or private clinic, we see the results of the tests on the form of a large laboratory. The reason is simple - expensive equipment (and a good analyzer costs tens, and some hundreds of thousands of dollars) pays for itself only if there is a large amount of research.
If we draw an analogy, then a medical institution is a store, and a laboratory is a test production factory. Recall the classical pattern of movement of goods from producer to consumer:
Considering that the cost of an examination for the main biochemical parameters of blood (and this is one of the most popular analysis complexes), on average, is about two and a half thousand rubles, a reasonable question arises: “Can’t you do without an intermediary extra charge?”. If now on the Internet you can buy goods directly from the manufacturer and much cheaper than in the store, then why not do the same with the analyzes? It turns out that it is already possible.
Four years ago, in the fall of 2012, the LAB4U service began its work(short for "Laboratory for you") - the first and so far the only online store for medical analysis. Users independently choose the necessary studies, time and place of admission and pay for them directly on the site. The order thus formed is transmitted directly to the laboratory information system. Thus, we reduce our expenses, and customers can think through their details in advance to the smallest detail without wasting time in the queues.
The vast majority of studies are blood tests - and here you can not do without the help of medical personnel. That is why networked commercial laboratories open their treatment rooms. But these are large additional costs that are laid down in the price of research.
To minimize them, LAB4U transferred patients to commercial medical centers. At the same time, everyone wins: we do not spend money on opening and maintaining treatment rooms, patients save an amount equal to the cost of tests, and medical centers receive money from us for taking biomaterial, although this is not the most important thing for them - after all, potential clients come to them. Most of our partners (more than a hundred) are located in Moscow and St. Petersburg, and they are also in Nizhny Novgorod, Vladimir, Kaluga, Ryazan, Tver, Tula and Yaroslavl. Since April 2016, we have been receiving patients for medical centers in Ivanovo, Kostroma, Perm, Kazan and Cheboksary. In May Voronezh was added to this list, in June - Ufa, Kursk and Oryol. In the near future - expanding the geography of our presence in Russia.
Since medical centers are not our units, it was necessary to develop a special form of referral for testing. Our customers receive it after paying for the order and it contains all the necessary information for the patient, medical center and laboratory:
There is also a third page for the laboratory.
After the patient visits the medical center with a referral, it remains to deliver the biomaterial to the BION “analysis factory”, where research is directly conducted on modern high-performance analyzers :
Finished results are sent to e-mail.
Briefly about what we have “under the hood”: the service platform is Bitrix, additional functionality is implemented on PHP. HTTPS provides secure communications.
The tight integration of LAB4U with the Intersystems laboratory information system made it possible to offer our customers a unique service - an additional order of research without delivery of biomaterial. In the event that the test material can be stored for a long time (for example, blood serum), after receiving the results of the main order, the patient can make a new order without donating blood again (but only if there is enough material for this).
Like everything in nature, our organization is not without flaws, and they are the flip side of its advantages. So, not for all studies the laboratory can provide a discount of 50% or more. Such an opportunity exists only if the work is as automated as possible - that is, the incoming biomaterial is processed almost completely in an automated analyzer. Fortunately, almost all of the most popular analyzes fall into this category, their total number is about three hundred.
On the other hand, most of the medical centers that work with us offer their laboratory services, and almost always they can be tested that are not presented on our website. Thus, it is possible to carry out all the studies “in one go”, part of the research paying LAB4U at a discount of 50%, and part to the medical center.
Many questions are related to the fact that analyzes must be paid in advance. It cannot be said that this was a surprise, so we, on the one hand, tried to make this process as convenient as possible, and on the other hand, we simplified issues related to canceling an order.
As a payment system, we chose Platron (a detailed description of the services of this operator was recently on Habré ) and connected the reception of both non-cash (bank cards, Internet banking) and cash payments (in communication stores and Qiwi terminals).
At the same time, we implemented a two-stage payment system for the order transparent to the user, when the funds are first transferred to the user's internal account and immediately go to pay for the analyzes. Thanks to this, our customers can independently cancel and create new orders (money is automatically returned and debited from the internal account).
Of course, a full refund is possible, which is made at the first request of the user. In the event that no more than three days have passed since the payment by credit card, the transaction can be “rolled back”, since we have a three-day holding period in Platron.
In the fall of 2016, we modestly celebrated the fourth anniversary of the work, during this time the interface was greatly updated and users had the opportunity to leave on our websiteyour feedback .
In order to place and pay for orders via mobile devices, in addition to mobile applications for iOS and Android , a mobile version of the site was developed in 2016 . The applications have all the information necessary for analysis, so our mobile users may not print out forms of directions.
In order to make the order of analyzes convenient and understandable, we divided the entire procedure into several stages and added a brief description of the process to the description of each test. A general idea of the work of LAB4U can be obtained by watching the video:
The user is informed about the completion of all significant events (payment, cancellation, order fulfillment) by messages to e-mail and cell phone.
ps The creation of the service was at the peak of the popularity of discount sites. In order for us to be able to present our analyzes there, the “annual subscription” was put into the LAB4U functional - an annual fee of 99 rubles for the ability to place orders with a discount of up to 50% to a group of users up to 5 people. Unexpectedly for us, the subscription was also useful in that it allowed us to minimize the number of re-registrations.
We offer all our readers on Gictimes a promotional code for the annual subscription CP-E2PBN-ZASW7FX, which provides free access to LAB4U , subject to activation by the end of 2016.
The first thought - why was there something to invent? Let's try to figure it out. Increasingly donating blood in a public or private clinic, we see the results of the tests on the form of a large laboratory. The reason is simple - expensive equipment (and a good analyzer costs tens, and some hundreds of thousands of dollars) pays for itself only if there is a large amount of research.
If we draw an analogy, then a medical institution is a store, and a laboratory is a test production factory. Recall the classical pattern of movement of goods from producer to consumer:
Considering that the cost of an examination for the main biochemical parameters of blood (and this is one of the most popular analysis complexes), on average, is about two and a half thousand rubles, a reasonable question arises: “Can’t you do without an intermediary extra charge?”. If now on the Internet you can buy goods directly from the manufacturer and much cheaper than in the store, then why not do the same with the analyzes? It turns out that it is already possible.
Four years ago, in the fall of 2012, the LAB4U service began its work(short for "Laboratory for you") - the first and so far the only online store for medical analysis. Users independently choose the necessary studies, time and place of admission and pay for them directly on the site. The order thus formed is transmitted directly to the laboratory information system. Thus, we reduce our expenses, and customers can think through their details in advance to the smallest detail without wasting time in the queues.
The vast majority of studies are blood tests - and here you can not do without the help of medical personnel. That is why networked commercial laboratories open their treatment rooms. But these are large additional costs that are laid down in the price of research.
To minimize them, LAB4U transferred patients to commercial medical centers. At the same time, everyone wins: we do not spend money on opening and maintaining treatment rooms, patients save an amount equal to the cost of tests, and medical centers receive money from us for taking biomaterial, although this is not the most important thing for them - after all, potential clients come to them. Most of our partners (more than a hundred) are located in Moscow and St. Petersburg, and they are also in Nizhny Novgorod, Vladimir, Kaluga, Ryazan, Tver, Tula and Yaroslavl. Since April 2016, we have been receiving patients for medical centers in Ivanovo, Kostroma, Perm, Kazan and Cheboksary. In May Voronezh was added to this list, in June - Ufa, Kursk and Oryol. In the near future - expanding the geography of our presence in Russia.
Since medical centers are not our units, it was necessary to develop a special form of referral for testing. Our customers receive it after paying for the order and it contains all the necessary information for the patient, medical center and laboratory:
There is also a third page for the laboratory.
After the patient visits the medical center with a referral, it remains to deliver the biomaterial to the BION “analysis factory”, where research is directly conducted on modern high-performance analyzers :
Finished results are sent to e-mail.
Briefly about what we have “under the hood”: the service platform is Bitrix, additional functionality is implemented on PHP. HTTPS provides secure communications.
The tight integration of LAB4U with the Intersystems laboratory information system made it possible to offer our customers a unique service - an additional order of research without delivery of biomaterial. In the event that the test material can be stored for a long time (for example, blood serum), after receiving the results of the main order, the patient can make a new order without donating blood again (but only if there is enough material for this).
Like everything in nature, our organization is not without flaws, and they are the flip side of its advantages. So, not for all studies the laboratory can provide a discount of 50% or more. Such an opportunity exists only if the work is as automated as possible - that is, the incoming biomaterial is processed almost completely in an automated analyzer. Fortunately, almost all of the most popular analyzes fall into this category, their total number is about three hundred.
On the other hand, most of the medical centers that work with us offer their laboratory services, and almost always they can be tested that are not presented on our website. Thus, it is possible to carry out all the studies “in one go”, part of the research paying LAB4U at a discount of 50%, and part to the medical center.
Many questions are related to the fact that analyzes must be paid in advance. It cannot be said that this was a surprise, so we, on the one hand, tried to make this process as convenient as possible, and on the other hand, we simplified issues related to canceling an order.
As a payment system, we chose Platron (a detailed description of the services of this operator was recently on Habré ) and connected the reception of both non-cash (bank cards, Internet banking) and cash payments (in communication stores and Qiwi terminals).
At the same time, we implemented a two-stage payment system for the order transparent to the user, when the funds are first transferred to the user's internal account and immediately go to pay for the analyzes. Thanks to this, our customers can independently cancel and create new orders (money is automatically returned and debited from the internal account).
Of course, a full refund is possible, which is made at the first request of the user. In the event that no more than three days have passed since the payment by credit card, the transaction can be “rolled back”, since we have a three-day holding period in Platron.
In the fall of 2016, we modestly celebrated the fourth anniversary of the work, during this time the interface was greatly updated and users had the opportunity to leave on our websiteyour feedback .
In order to place and pay for orders via mobile devices, in addition to mobile applications for iOS and Android , a mobile version of the site was developed in 2016 . The applications have all the information necessary for analysis, so our mobile users may not print out forms of directions.
In order to make the order of analyzes convenient and understandable, we divided the entire procedure into several stages and added a brief description of the process to the description of each test. A general idea of the work of LAB4U can be obtained by watching the video:
The user is informed about the completion of all significant events (payment, cancellation, order fulfillment) by messages to e-mail and cell phone.
ps The creation of the service was at the peak of the popularity of discount sites. In order for us to be able to present our analyzes there, the “annual subscription” was put into the LAB4U functional - an annual fee of 99 rubles for the ability to place orders with a discount of up to 50% to a group of users up to 5 people. Unexpectedly for us, the subscription was also useful in that it allowed us to minimize the number of re-registrations.
We offer all our readers on Gictimes a promotional code for the annual subscription CP-E2PBN-ZASW7FX, which provides free access to LAB4U , subject to activation by the end of 2016.