The other day I had this discussion with a friend, he told me that one of their friends had surgery and that out of their pocket even with insurance thay had to pay thousands for getting a tooth patched, I told him my dentist in Mexico charged me about $50 USD to get my tooth patched with no insurance.

Some times when I wake I try to stay in silence and think about what I'm doing daily, what knowledge have I gained that can provide me to start something bigger than a hobby: a personal project.

After the conversation with my friend I remembered my experience with this company, they constructed a website that travel agencies could use to sell travel packages and thought: why couldn't I, after 5 years of working with them, use what I learned and start, not the same but a project that have some similarities: a travel for medical procedures.

And so that is how I started thinking in what would a project like needs: it should provide cost details of traveling, it should provide transparency on the travels, but mostly it should give peace of mind that the hospital and professionals the clients are going to are not just "Nick Rivieras" (the doctor from the Simpsons).

image

So to tackle those goals I thought of this:

  • Cost details: to make it cost effective I will use API's from the internet, it will look with providers all over for best prices in airlines and hotels.
  • Transparency on the travels: it should display a list with the expected costs, including flight tickets, hotel costs and a very broad calculation on how much would a regular (with no complications) procedure would cost.
  • Help: it should provide a service of companionship, lets say the client is traveling to Mexico City, it is a big city, bigger than New York for example, so the client might feel overwhelmed by its tricks that only locals know about (like where to take an Uber from). That is why one of the features of the app is the ability to hire the services of a local companion, someone local that can go with you, speak your language and guide you through the city to your appointment, they would not be able to help you with your medical specific requirement, but they can take you to the doctor's door.
  • The professionals: this is the meat and potatoes of the app, there should be a catalog of affiliated professionals, the client would have the list of hospitals and professionals, along with their specialities, their studies, their achievments, diplomas and everything you as client wants to know about someone who is going to treat you medically. Also something super important: if they speak your language.

Now, the application ideally wouldn't charge you anything, it would just provide you the means to consult the data from its catalog on the basic account, the earnings would come out of the hospitals and doctors affiliated and a pinch of pennies out of the hotels and flights reservations that would be made directly from the airlines and hotels. The next income source would be a "plus" account, that would allow the users to use an AI agent to help them coordinate everything and help them make comparisons to make the best choice at the time of picking the professionals.

And this is where we are at: MediVoyage