How To Build A Diagnostics and Pathlabs Multi Vendor Marketplace

COVID-19 disrupted our lives and radically changed healthcare and diagnostics markets worldwide. While telemedicine brought doctors to our homes, digital diagnostics services made it easy to validate and accurately diagnose ailments. With pathology samples getting collected from patients’ doorsteps and results available online in digital format it became easier for patients to access top-notch medical consultations without physically visiting the doctors or pathology labs.

Driven by the growing demand for convenient, accessible and affordable medical services the online pathlabs business has witnessed significant growth in recent years. Diagnostics brands are focusing on a variety of services and expansion beyond geographical boundaries to grow the business.

Here is how the global pathlabs market has been shaping up in recent years;

• $1.37 billion is the forecasted revenue from the global digital pathology market by 2026
• 13.2% is the forecasted CAGR of the global digital pathlab market for 2021-2026 
• $14.8 billion is the value of diagnostics labs market in Indis in 2022
• 11.65% is the CAGR of pathlabs market in India
• $22.6 Billion is the forecasted value of the Indian pathology labs market by 2027

Source: Markets and Markets, Businesswire, Tech SCI Research

The online pathology labs market is the hottest battleground for healthcare enterprise brands planning to upscale their offerings. 

Why building a Pathlabs Marketplace is a lucrative business idea

Modern medicine is heavily dependent on diagnostics results. 70% of treatment decisions are based on the results obtained from various lab results. The industry has witnessed huge growth with people becoming more aware of their health and opting for regular health checkups routinely. 

Here is why enterprise brands should consider building their pathology multi vendor marketplace:

Demand uptick

There has been a growing demand for online pathology services as these services are cost-effective and easily accessible. Patients are gravitating towards online pathology services instead of visiting the brick-and-mortar patlabs.

Increased adoption

With the COVID-induced conditioning, even those patient segments which never considered online consultations and digital pathology services have now adopted healthcare services in the digital avatar. 

Wider reach

By setting up an online diagnostics multi-seller platform, your healthcare brand can cater to a wider patient base across geographies. Also, you can offer varied services by tying up with local lab service providers. 

Cost-effective solution

Setting up an online marketplace offers huge savings in form of CapEx, reduced staffing cost, lesser sales persons etc. 

Organizational efficiency

In a digital path labs online marketplace, the overall processes get standardised, digitised and connected. This brings organizational efficiency across different labs located at different places. 

Build your brand

Setting up your own diagnostics marketplace gives your brand better visibility and opens up avenues of tie-up with big hospitals and other healthcare organizations. Also, volume growth becomes easier when you have tie-ups with other health and diagnostics service providers across a vast geographical area.  

Scope to diversify business

By building their own multi vendor marketplace for pathology labs brands can create new sources of revenue by offering associated services like care providers, physiotherapy services, nursing care etc. to their patient-base.

Huge-database

Having an online marketplace for pathology labs gives enterprise health care brands access to a vast pool of data and patient conditions. This can go a long way in helping research and using the database for predictive modeling for disease identification, prevention and medine interactions. Lab owners can use these databases to earn additional revenue.

With so many benefits, building a diagnostics marketplace is definitely a new-age business move aligned with the trends and shifts in the healthcare sector. Enterprise brands starting early can leverage the beginners advantage to capture a sizeable market share quickly. 

How does a Diagnostics Marketplace work

In a typical marketplace set up for path labs business typically uses a combination of two or three popular ecommerce models namely multi store set up with hyperlocal serviceable area and a network of local vendors/service providers/lab owners that work under the online marketplace umbrella brand.

Let us see how the multi vendor marketplace for lab and diagnostics services work:

Step 1: An umbrella brand is created under which different vendors will be onboarded to offer a range of services. For example let us assume a brand Medi Diagnostics Ltd. is created.

Step 2: Decide the serviceable area and the types of pathology, radiology and other services you plan to offer under your brand.

Step 3: Tie-up with local lab operators in your target market and give them their independent hyperlocal stores to receive orders/sample collection requests from patients

Step 4: Set up a detailed process for sample collection and reports release for patients.

Step 5: Set up the commissions and payment terms for different vendors.

Step 6: Start accepting diagnostics tests requests from customers on your marketplace website and app. Automatically route the customer to the nearest vendor from customer location. Once request received the given vendor lab can connect with the user using channels like SMS, phone call or WhatsApp chat and technician can be assigned for sample collection. Also, customer is guided to payment options and payment is collected before the actual collection of sample.

Step 7: Collected samples are brought to the lab and tested. After the due time results are made available to the customer who can login using their user id password and access and share their reports with their doctors.

Step 8: The vendor lab gets the payment after deduction of commission by the multi vendor marketplace brand Medi Diagnostics Ltd.

Building a multi seller marketplace for pathology labs is a novel idea and with the right marketing and extensive partner/vendor network it has the potential to make your healthcare brand the market disruptor.

What are the basic requirements to set up a diagnostics marketplace website and apps

Now that we have seen how an online marketplace for pathology test based services works, it is time to review the basic requirements that can help you set up your marketplace quickly.

1. Determine the target audience

Well, though it may seem that you are building your diagnostics marketplace just for the end customers, there could be layered customer segments for your B2B2C marketplace wherein you are not just serving the B2C clients but other hospitals, doctors etc. as your clients. Decide the scope of your business and determine the different customer personas for your path lab multi seller brand. Deciding your different audience sets will help you chalk out the requirements for your marketplace.

2. Conduct market research

Do a thorough market research to identify the current state of pathology lab market, current market practices, your biggest competitors, the gaps, custom pain points etc. This research will help in getting a better understand of the current diagnostics industry trends and ways to get ahead of your competition. 

3. Choose the right tech solution

The success of your multi vendor marketplace for pathology business depends on the tech stack and the tech solution provider you choose to build your marketplace website and apps. Going with marketplace platform that comes with battle-tested solutions and modules for handling the complexities of a marketplace website of this scale will be a smarter choice as it will reduce the go-to-market time and also offer scalability to support the growing business.

4. Onboard the right vendors

Despite having the best tech solutions, if you fail to partner with the right vendor partners, your diagnostics marketplace cannot be a success. Decide on the vendor partners and do all the necessary MoUs and paperwork to onboard the vendors on your website. Also, create deals and strategies that help you and your vendor partners grow in volume and scale new heights of success.

5. Streamline your sample collection

Your path labs multi vendor marketplace can be a success only if caters well to its clients’ requirements. For this, your sample collection system and lab tests need to be accurate and timely. Develop a system where it is easy for your service agents to reach client location, collect samples and take it back to the lab in a timely and protocol-compliant manner. Also, train your teams for treating customers well. A strong customer relationship goes a long way in building your brand and giving your business an edge over the competition.  

Once you have listed down your requirements it is time to get started looking for the right tech partner and parallelly do your market research and look for the vendors you want to onboard on your pathlabs marketplace.

Why StoreHippo is the best online marketplace builder for your diagnostics multi seller marketplace

StoreHippo multi vendor ecommerce platform helps you tick many of the above requirements with its well-rounded marketplace solutions designed for a variety of hybrid and custom business models. 

Future-ready technology

Built on MACH architecture, StoreHippo gives your brand the flexibility, scalability and agility to tweak the front end as well as the back end and build tailor-made solutions for launching a diagnostics marketplace website. StoreHippo also comes with 300+ built-in features and 120+ built-in integrations that help you build your own ecommerce environment using the plug-and-play StoreHippo marketplace builder along with the best-in-breed software for the diagnostics industry vertical.

Marketplace apps

Built on mobile-first principle, StoreHippo builds PWA stores. This means your customers can open your pathology marketplace website even on entry-level devices and use it just like a mobile app. You can also use the inbuilt mobile apps builder to build your Android and iOS apps without any coding or additional cost.

Omnichannel solutions

StoreHippo enables you to easily take your diagnostics marketplace omnichannel by helping you build new frontends with the same backend logic and APIs. In this era when your customers want to connect with your brand on multiple touchpoints like websites, apps, offline stores, social channels etc. StoreHippo gives you the technology and tools to build your omnichannel presence in record time. 

What’s more, Storehippo also helps you craft personalised experiences for all channels so your patient customers can book their appointments in a hassle-free manner.

Support for various business models

StoreHippo also comes with built-in support for the multivendor model along with end-to-end solutions for the hyperlocal marketplace and multi-store set-up. You can easily set-up location-based stores for your vendor labs and give them a separate admin to manage their business. The diagnostics marketplace admin will have complete visibility, access and control over all the vendor sub-stores.

You also get built-in support for B2B, B2C, D2C, B2B2C and other business models which help you in the long run when you want to diversify the business or pivot to new business models catering to wholesale and retail clients from the same platform.

StoreHippo enterprise ecommerce solutions have been powering a variety of online marketplaces across industries. With experience and expertise in building successful omnichannel digital solutions for brands, StoreHippo is well placed to build pathlabs marketplace for enterprise healthcare brands of any scale and size.

How to set up a Diagnostics online marketplace with StoreHippo

Now that we have seen the advantages of building a multi-seller marketplace and app with StoreHippo, it is time to get started with the process. Here is how you can build your diagnostics marketplace with StoreHippo:

Sign up for StoreHippo

After exploring the StoreHippo platform using the 14-day free trial, choose your subscription plan and start setting up your real store. Discuss your unique requirements with StoreHippo online marketplace experts and customize your marketplace for unique flows related to your business processes. 

These may include slot booking features and reports feature for customers, sample collection person assignment, locations-wise pathlab assignment, delivery boy management solutions that help your sample collection staff reach customer locations easily through Google maps.

Along with building your marketplace website, you can also build your marketplace apps right from your admin dashboard. 

With its experience in the healthcare industry, StoreHippo is well-positioned to take care of all the requirements of a cutting-edge marketplace website and app for the diagnostics business.

Decide on different levels of vendors

Decide on the different sets/levels of vendors you would be having on your diagnostics marketplace. These could be the lab owners and their internal staff, doctors who might like to collaborate with your brand, and suppliers who supply lab equipment, chemicals, test kits etc.

For each vendor group, you will need to set up different seller managers and admin and other roles. StoreHippo comes with built-in features that easily let you set up different roles and give different access and controls to vendor groups.

You might also need to set up different location-based sub-stores based on your vendor labs or city-specific stores 

Choose and customize your theme

Just getting your backend ready is not enough to make your business a success. Your themes and front end need to be jazzed up and made customer friendly. After setting your flows right, choose the most suitable theme from StoreHippo’s themes library and customize it to suit your business requirements.

StoreHippo offers multilingual support for building multi vendor marketplace and apps and also supports multiple languages in themes. The customizable, device-optimized themes can be tweaked using the built-in drag-and-drop tools to give a unique look and feel to your diagnostics marketplace.

With Storehippo you can also create dynamic landing pages for marketing purposes and customise the customer login based on the geolocation, language etc. of the users.

Customize your pathology multi vendor marketplace

Tweak and customize your backend for your unique requirement. Use and extend the existing entities of StoreHippo or create new entities for your unique requirements. Set up different user logins, and get mobile admin apps to run your business on the go. 

StoreHippo’s decoupled headless architecture makes it easy for your to make changes to the backend of your diagnostics marketplace without disturbing the front end.

Set up the payment options

After the marketplace set-up is in place, it is time to set it up for receiving actual orders. For this, you will have to set up a variety of payment options that make it easy for your customers to place orders. 

Thanks to the growing popularity of Indian healthcare in foreign countries it is advisable to set up multi-currency payment options also as in tier I cities there is a good number of foreign patients visiting for treatment.  

StoreHippo offers 60+ pre-integrated domestic and international payment gateways along with built-in support for multi-currency payments and invoicing. The built-in tax engine also enables you to easily calculate different levels of taxes wherever applicable along with GST.

Sample collection and testing flow

An important part of a digital pathology lab is the feature to have sample collection done at home. For this, each vendor lab will need its own sample collection specialists that can go to customers doorsteps and collect samples.

To manage this flow of sample collection agents, StoreHippo offers a unique delivery boy management module wherein each vendor lab can assign orders to the sample collection person. Once assigned each sample collection personnel can log in using their credentials and check the orders assigned to them, use the inbuilt Google map to reach the customer location accurately, collect samples and payment ( in case applicable) and change the status of the order.

Market and launch

Now that your diagnostics marketplace is all set, with complete payment and ordering functionality it is time to market your business on all available platforms. Create your social media presence and offer freebies to attract traffic. You can also use StoreHippo’s built in discount engine to offer different types of discounts and coupons to promote your business.

Tie-up with doctors and hospitals in various cities and towns. Run an end-to-end test to check issues if any in your flow and go live.

Optimize and add more vendors/locations for growth

Once your diagnostics marketplace is launched and running smoothly you can plan expansion by adding more locations and vendors. You can even plan a global foray by tying up with other market players in different countries.

StoreHippo comes with built-in go-global solutions which make it easy for you to build a multilingual diagnostics marketplace and accept multi-currency payments. You can also integrate with local payment solutions to make checkouts frictionless.

Conclusion

In this blog we have presented a complete analysis of the market trends related to online diagnostics services, their market size and their scope of growth.

If you are also interested in building your multi vendor marketplace in the pathology and healthcare domain this is the time to go for it. StoreHippo offers end-to-end enterprise ecommerce solutions to build your own tailor-made online marketplace. The scalable, customizable and future-ready solutions from StoreHippo are designed to accommodate your business growth as you scale new heights of success.

StoreHippo’s plug-and-play multi vendor marketplace solutions make it easy for you to manage your vendors and streamline the complex flows of your diagnostics marketplace. 

Ready to get started? Book StoreHippo's free demo right away.