Medical Equipment-Sharing

 Most medical equipment tend to be very expensive and medical professionals oftentimes opt to lease or finance these devices instead of buying them with cash. Just imagine how much it would cost a Doctor to purchase a CT Scanner, MRI and Ultrasound machine out of his or her pocket all at once. This is highly unlikely in most cases since Loans and Rentals are most times what hospitals use to obtain the most up-to-date and high tech medical equipment. Manufacturers of these medical devices tend to work closely with financial institutions to help customers finance the purchase of these medical equipment using debt. Medical Laboratory equipment such as hematology and/or chemistry analyzers are also very costly and in most instances they are leased or even subleased. The sharing economy is taking precedence in the medical industry since most healthcare workers do not want to take on the long-term responsible of owning medical equipment but are more willing to rent medical devices on a short term basis. 

Most salespeople in Laboratory Medicine who sell medical equipment also provide customers with financing or rental options. It is a guarantee that 80% of Medical Laboratory Equipment sold is via financing through a Loan or via leasing/rental. Health professionals are now focusing on how fast they can scale their business, hence using sharing and rental services are more attractive to the entrepreneur who wants to expand fast. From office-sharing to home-sharing to equipment-sharing, we can see how the medical industry is becoming more integrated into the sharing economy. Medical Equipment-Sharing is the future and will be more popularized via the internet.

Medical Home-Sharing

Patients have always been seeking better and/or more affordable healthcare in other countries. In some cases, a particular medical treatment may not be available in their country and patients are required to travel overseas in order to get treatment. This reality has existed from the beginning of healthcare and will continue after the COVID-19 pandemic has passed. The structure and medium through which medical tourism is facilitated will be different and now it will rely heavily on the internet. Internet companies such as Airbnb and Homestay has changed a lot of the structure of the travel industry and most tourists are seeking affordable accommodations from homeowners more often than from hoteliers. After COVID-19, an airbnb for medical tourism will allow qualified medical professionals to act as hosts that accommodate patients as their guests. These medical professionals will have to adapt a strategy of operating a medical hotel instead of just a mere medical center or hospital. This is the strategy that will take medical tourism into the future after the year 2020. Gav-Med Solutions intends to be a part of this revolution and will share ideas through this blog that will keep everyone informed about real estate trends and how it will affect medical tourism in the future. A new venture called Gav-Inn is being developed that will focus on creating medical homes and combine real estate and the internet to better meet patients needs via medical tourism.

Traveling within the borders of your own country in order to access better healthcare is also a form of medical tourism. A patient does not have to buy a ticket from an airline and travel overseas in order to be considered a medical tourist. Simply taking a taxi from a rural district to access healthcare in an urban area is a form of medical tourism. If a medical laboratory test is not available in one area of a country and you have to travel to another area of the country to get your medical laboratory test done, then that is medical tourism. Airbnb has leveled the playing field for homeowners to operate like hoteliers and now with medical tourism, all medical professionals can operate like hospitals. This is a new era of medical real estate and medical tourism which will be revolutionized by the internet.

Medical Laboratory-Sharing

The sharing economy has changed how capitalistic societies operate and now more persons are renting instead of buying. This is evident in every industry but more so in areas such as commercial and residential real estate. Uber is an example of the peer to peer age that we now live in where technology is disrupting a lot of industries such as the taxi industry in the case of Uber. Airbnb has evolved as a home-sharing company which was valued at $38B in 2018 and Wework has evolved as a office-sharing company which was valued at $47B in 2019. None of these two companies own any real estate but make money from other people's property. Airbnb operates as a broker by receiving commission for booking of lodging arrangements, primarily homestays or other tourism experiences. Wework operates by long-term leasing of office space, renovating and furnishing the space and subleasing divided workspaces to their members. Their members include freelancers, startups, entrepreneurs and small businesses that do short-term rentals. This type of business model is referred to as rent arbitrage which is how Wework built itself into owning more than 150 locations worldwide and 500,000 members. Wework also has a venture called Welive which operates with the same business model but applies it to rental apartments instead of office spaces.

Similarly, medical laboratories can operate with this concept of rent arbitrage if it is properly orchestrated. Simply, one would lease a major commercial space on a long-term basis and divide it into small medical laboratories that are already furnished with medical laboratory equipment and all the necessary accessories for operation then rent the workspace to medical technologists on a short-term basis. Instead of starting a medical laboratory from scratch by finding a location, furnishing the location, insuring the location, branding and advertising the location, the medical technologist would simply "Rent-A-Lab". It is as simple as it sounds, and its the beauty of rent arbitrage and how it works as a real estate strategy that benefits all parties involved. Another simple Medical Laboratory- sharing strategy is offering your medical laboratory blood testing services to countless blood collection locations for a percentage of the cost for each blood test. 

Gav-Med Labs intends to implement this strategy based on the scalability of the idea and how all parties can benefit. Rent arbitrage is what allows anyone to use real estate to build businesses by subletting the space to other tenants. Just like home-sharing and office-sharing, medical laboratory-sharing can use this strategy to its advantage. This would aid more medical technologists to become entrepreneurs and salespeople and reduce the cost of starting medical laboratory. A medical technologist can rent a lab for a day, a week or even a month on the short-term basis. There will be more entrepreneurs and salespeople in the field of Laboratory Medicine and some will also take advantage of mobile phlebotomy to get more sales in laboratory medicine. This idea is built on the concept of "Rent-A-Lab" and will be the real estate investment strategy of the future.