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DOOH kids on the healthcare block
Two young entrepreneurs from La Crosse, Wis., are working hard to make a splash in the healthcare digital-out-of-home network world.
August 25, 2010 by Christopher Hall — w, t
Two young entrepreneurs in La Crosse, Wis., say they spent enough time getting bored in doctors' waiting rooms to figure there was a business opportunity there, reaching other members of that captive audience.
And they've already inked a deal with a major broadcast network for content and have a brash full-speed-ahead mentality that's led to some quick growth for their fledgling medical office digital out-of-home (DOOH) network.
SmartHealth Media LLC, the brainchild of partners Matt Boshcka and A.J. Peterson, has been up and running since April and has already spread its healthcare digital signage network to eight major designated market areas (DMAs) in seven states — and they're pushing hard for more, according to company president and co-founder Boshcka.
The company is targeting any kind of medical practice — from dentistry to podiatry to endocrinology — with a minimum of 200 patients.
"If they're in the medical field it's game on," Boshcka said.
Boshcka, a former pharmaceutical sales manager, and Peterson, a former marketing coordinator, decided to start SmartHealth after seeing similar networks and thinking they could do that just as well, Boshcka says.
"We've seen a lot of bored patients, and we've even dozed off ourselves in waiting rooms waiting to speak to doctors, so it only made sense," he said.
Right now SmartHealth is deploying one screen per medical practice office, charging the practices nothing for the installation and making its money from selling advertising on the network.
Boshcka and co-founder Peterson, the company CEO, started putting together SmartHealth Media almost a year ago, and were ready to get up and running in early April. Right now the network has upwards of 25 screens in Milwaukee — as well as smaller groupings in cities like Chicago, Indianapolis and New York — and is making a push in Los Angles, Charlotte, N.C., and South Florida. The network should have 30 to 40 screens deployed in South Florida by the end of September, and it recently landed a healthcare system in Los Angeles that should see it deploy another 15 screens there, Boshcka says.
SmartHealth is "basically … your typical medical office DOOH network," but it does have attributes that make it stand out from the pack, Boshcka says.
SmartHealth is NBC-affiliated, he says, so the company uses high-quality, high-def, NBC-produced health and wellness segments and features interactive health trivia questions in addition to the network's more prosaic branded messaging, health trivia, easy-to-make health food recipes, local weather updates and national headline news RSS feed.
"From my understanding we're one of the only NBC-produced health and wellness networks out there," he said. "And we also do Spanish as well, so we're starting to tap into the Spanish market."
Boshcka and Peterson also have started a for-now smaller bar network, TwistedTV, in La Crosse, working with interactive digital signage bleeding-edge firm LocaModa to make the network's bar screens interactive. And they're working with LocaModa to make their healthcare network more interactive as well, Boshcka says.
SmartHealth's TwistedTV bar network is currently still driving most of the company's revenues, with screens deployed in eight venues in La Crosse, Boshcka says. The interactive features in use on TwistedTV, such as text polling, and text and photo uploads to the digital signage screens, are being used as pilots for potential interactive features on the health network.
"We have some cool, creative and different things going on," he said.
About Christopher Hall
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