遠距心理諮商服務平台商業企劃書

Abstract

It is reported that there are over 1 billion of people suffering from psychological disorder worldwide (James et al., 2018). In Taiwan, at least 1 out of 10 people are seeking professional help for mental health issues (Ministry of Health and Welfare, 2018) and the total number of registered patients in the health insurance system is 2,638,382 people. Nevertheless, it is found that only 20% of the people with professional mental health service needs are seeking professional assistance (Liao et al., 2011), which means that many clients in need are left without proper therapies and which may lead to worsening symptoms. As one of the most critical barriers is stigma and cultural stoicism (Liao et al., 2011), our platform, Everapy, aims at making use of the latest online communication technology to facilitate professional service via telepsychology means, such as text messages, voice calls and video calls on a mobile application. By the name of the platform, we provide professional consultation service for everyone, everywhere at every moment. According to the market research from Data Bridge Market Research (MarketWatch Inc., 2019), the global annual sales of telepsychology service in 2018 was USD 2.6 billion. It is expected to have a CAGR of 24.65% from 2019 to 2026. By 2026, the market size is estimated to be USD 15.15 billion. On 29th November, 2019, the Taiwan Ministry of Health and Welfare announced the “心理師執行通訊心理諮商業務核准作業參考原則 [Practice Guideline for Psychologists Practicing Psychotherapy via Communication Technology]” (Ministry of Health and Welfare, 2019a). In the guideline, it is stated that telepsychology practice can be applied from the institutions to the regulatory office of the corresponding county or city. This marked the “official” legal start for telepsychology in Taiwan. In our 2-sided platform, Everapy, we target 2 groups of customers, the service providers, registered clinical psychologists and counseling psychologists, and the clients, which the segmentation is those who would like to improve their quality of life mentally of the age group of 20~54 years old and with access to the Internet. Through interviews with the potential customers from the two sides, we captured their pains and gains throughout the patient journey and design the business model with services which fit their needs. The Lean Startup methodology (Ries, 2011) is adopted and product market fit is being evaluated by an MVP (minimum viable product), going through the loop of the BML (build-measure-learn) feedback loop to improve the functions and flow of the platform. Throughout the patient journey, we focus on the help seeking, diagnosis and treatment phases. Competitor analysis is also conducted on the existing telepsychology service platforms to create value which is not being fulfilled yet. To stand out from the existing players, Everapy do not only aim at creating values for the clients, we also provide add-on services to the service providers, such as libraries of psychological education materials and customizable self-management tools, to facilitate their communication with the clients.