Blue and Red Ocean Strategies

It has become a cliché to say there is much fish in the ocean, but in the same breathe there is plenty of shark in the sea. In business, the consumer is compared to the fishes. There is a whole school of fish in each and every market. The sharks in this analogy are the many businesses competing for the same fish for food. A good mental picture is formed once one sees a shark in a shark tank being fed. From complete funeral cost coverage to a partial coverage. All this covers depend on the depth of the pocket. The insurance companies nonetheless have become ruthless and money driven instead of patient-centered. The blue and red ocean strategies originate from the book “Blue Ocean Strategy”, which was co-authored by Renée Mauborgne and Chan Kim.

It was based on a study they conducted on strategic moves dating back to more than a century ago (Kim and Mauborgne, 2014). The airline market is already saturated by airline business for short distances. Ryanair focuses on low costs and no frill service. They have maintained the strategy successfully without running bankrupt by use of secondary runways. The use of airfields located away from the busy city allow booking and check-in to be done online and also passes on the burden of paying for extras. They are not premium but they are cheap. Thus, for blockchain to be effective it has to add value to the patient's life. It needs to hinge around the patients' wellbeing. To identify areas ripe for the blue ocean strategy we need to weigh them against four main criteria.

First, elimination: to do away with already set standards in the industry. Secondly, reduction; greatly reduce the standards to below those set by the industry. The administrative staff that is required to file tons of paperwork is done away with. If not entirely cut out, a significant amount of them would be needed. Less paperwork also means less is spent on paper, ink, and huge floor space to act as a store for the paperwork (Hao et al, 2018). By extension, even the cleaning and security guards located in such areas are significantly reduced. Blockchain reduces the overhead by a huge margin (Iansiti and Lakhani, 2017). Most times, we entrust the hospitals and other urgent caregiving facilities to ensure the safekeeping of a patient's record.

With blockchain, an open distributed system would ensure transparency in the system. Manipulation would be very minimal if not negligible. A claim that a patient visited a hospital would help clear the messy gloom that comes with claim processing and payments. Furthermore, using the raise metric, price regulation would take effect. More often than not, most patients do not know the technical terms used to describe diseases, other times they may have lost records of previous treatments. This would by extension reduce misdiagnosis of diseases where history is being based on speculations. Conclusion Every coin has two sides; blockchain has some pitfalls too. The decentralized ledger system is not technical friendly for those who are not tech savvy. It has also bred illicit transactions and dark webs where transactions can be made since no governing body regulates it.

It calls for a large network of users to achieve this. An ironic stance is that most times the success of a blockchain maybe it main hindrance to progress. Huge network costs and congestions may slow down operations and inflate transaction costs. This would also birth the question; health information is confidential, so would making a private network even be blockchain, to begin with? No one wants his or her medical history out to the public. References Crosby, M. Performance Analysis of Consensus Algorithm in Private Blockchain. In 2018 IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symposium (IV) (pp. IEEE. Iansiti, M. , & Lakhani, K. , & Mauborgne, R. A. Blue ocean strategy, expanded edition: How to create uncontested market space and make the competition irrelevant. Harvard business review Press.