The idea of healthy vending is not new, but success in the industry is. Most traditional vending operators think healthy vending will fail because they have been doing it the wrong way. To guarantee success in the healthy vending industry, it is necessary to follow these simple 5 rules.

#1 Healthy Vending Machines Must Stand Out

It is impossible to distinguish yourself as a health food vending operator if you operate machines that look like traditional junk food dispensers. If your machine doesn’t stand out in the crowd and scream “I am different!” you will not attract health-conscious customers. Health-conscious customers won’t bother to look in a traditional vending machine because they know there is nothing for sale they will eat. If your machines don’t look fresh, clean, and hi-tech, the health-conscious crowd you are targeting will not give your machines a second look. Spend the money on a new high-tech vending machine, it may cost a bit more get up and running but it is the only way you can expect success.

#2 Don’t Combine Healthy Snacks/Drinks With Junk Food

Hungry people lack self control. A hungry customer may walk towards a vending machine intending to eat a bag of pita chips, but when they get there and see a Twix bar staring them in the face their stomach gets the best of them. There is a reason that millions of dollars are spent every year on junk food marketing, it works! Those TV commercials have conditioned us to believe these items actually make us feel good. 15 minutes after the candy or chips are gone, the customer is filled with regret, and the healthy items are still your machines. Combining junk food with health food will cannibalize your sales of healthy items. Keep them separate for massive success!

#3 Healthy Vending Is About The Experience

Just like a traditional health food store, it is all about creating a higher-end, better experience for your customers. Think of your machines as “automated retail health stores” instead of merely vending machines. Think out of the box when creating your product mix and don’t be afraid to experiment with items that traditionally haven’t been vended. Think about your customers needs and wants and develop a plan to provide these.

Example #1 If your machine is in a gym, think about the people in the gym and their needs: workout towels, water bottles, Mp3 players, protein drinks, Nike + items, recovery tablets, etc. All these items can be vended and will sell to people who are in a gym.

Example #2 If you are sitting in a hospital chances are you are feeling one of two ways; either you sick, or you are worried about getting sick because you are surrounded by sick people. What will sell to people who are sick or worried about getting sick? Try placing immune boosting supplements and hand sanitizers in your machines. Think about what items will provide value for your customers, and then provide those items!

#4 Find The Right Location

Healthy Vending Machines will not be successful everywhere, so don’t place your machines in locations that are destined to fail. Kids play areas that already have candy machines are an example of a high traffic areas that would not be a great location for a healthy vending machine. Children armed with quarters probably can’t be trusted to make healthy choices when they are surrounded by machines that dispense candy and toys. Some great locations for healthy vending machines include schools, gyms, health-conscious companies, and hospitals. The key is to place your machines in high traffic areas filled with health-conscious people. Use common sense and analyze your clientele. Your local dive bar is probably not going to be a stellar place to push your healthy snacks and drinks!

#5 Develop Creative Healthy Vending Solutions

Because eating healthy is something that will improve all aspects of your life, make sure to develop plans to encourage people to make good choices. It has been proven time and time again, healthy employees are more productive and cost much less to insure than unhealthy employees, so convince your corporate locations to subsidize healthy products to increase uptake. This can be part of an overall wellness plan that integrates healthy vending machines with nutrition seminars and yoga workouts. The sky is the limit, any integrated wellness plans you can develop as an operator will help your pitch to top locations. If you plan to place machines in schools, think about offering a young entrepreneurship program that allows students to run the machines themselves. This is the best of both worlds, students are eating healthy and learning how to run a business, and as an operator you are gaining profitable school contracts. Creativity makes money!

Unlike elements of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that will not be implemented for several years, and even then initially on a pilot basis, Medicare market basket productivity adjustments have already begun, and will have a significant impact on every hospital. These adjustments, which reduce reimbursement based on prospective improved productivity, will affect hospitals and health systems, as well as skilled nursing facilities, long term care hospitals, inpatient rehabilitation facilities and other ancillary care facilities. The Congressional Budget Office projects the adjustments will save Medicare an estimated $157 billion over 10 years.Healthcare organizations that are currently in a good financial position will have to continue to improve just to maintain their position. Organizations whose financial position is currently unstable will need to take action right away to reduce expenses, increase revenue, or both.Healthcare executives can determine the impact of these reimbursement reductions on their organizations by using calculators available through the American Hospital Association or state hospital associations. The number that results from this calculation should then be used as a target for improvement within the next 6-12 months.Basic “blocking and tackling work” (improvements in revenue cycle, reductions in labor, non-labor and supply chain expenses) can create short term benefits, and buy an organization some time. But healthcare leaders should also be planning beyond that for permanent changes – clinical, operational, and financial – to be able to provide care at Medicare rates or below, while meeting the future demands of reform.BOTTOM LINE
Within the next 6-12 months, healthcare organizations will need to find a way to reduce their expenses or increase revenue by 3-5% to offset Medicare productivity adjustments. This will give them some breathing room to work on the transformational clinical and operational changes that reform will demand.

As the technology is advancing, smartphone applications are the most talked about for mobile health solutions. According to a mobile research company, research2gudiance, by 2015 smartphone applications will allow mobile health industry to reach more than 500 million people. Currently there are more than 20,000 mHealth apps in major mobile application stores, 75% of which follow the paid business model. As mHealth market is growing up, more healthcare providers are entering this market and expanding themselves via mobile applications as a result of which the business models will broaden up and include drug sales revenue, advertisements, healthcare services and much more.Demand for BlackBerry application for smartphones and playbooks for healthcare industry is increasing at a rapid pace. The mobile or playbook apps can help the healthcare industry in many ways. Clinicians and physicians can practice medicine anywhere with the immediate access to the information they need. Such apps can help reduce the burden of carrying and keeping files and medical records of the patients on the paper, instant communication at any point of time, costs can be controlled and medical errors can be reduced to certain extent. The healthcare mobile apps can also benefit the patients, wherein they can have an app that could remind them when they need to take the medicines and remind them of their appointment with the doctors, this in turn could also help the growth of the pharmaceutical industry.Such solutions will help the doctors to use a single device rather than using many devices which would help in proper communication and workflow management. This way the doctors could be linked to the patients, nurses, support staff etc and vice-versa. The mHealth app could also be used for group messaging critical alerts, calendar and contact infrastructure, nurse call integration to increase healthcare interoperability and much more.Mobile health apps have a promising future ahead as per the research records by various analysts which are as follows:1) Deloitte Center for health solutions found out that more than 50% of the consumers want personal monitoring device that would help them to improve their health or find solutions to ailments.
2) Remote patient monitoring with the help of mobile health apps will be over 5 billion dollar market by 2014, revealed a research done by Juniper.
3) A survey done my Mc Kinsey revealed that people are willing to pay more on mobile doctors and medication logs.
4) Wireless home health market will be around 5 billion dollars by 2013: Parks AssociatesWith the growth in the mobile applications for the healthcare segment, companies and hospitals are opting for them all across the world. Thus it is safe to say that mobile technology in global healthcare has three advantages:1) Medical consultation to remote patients
2) Doctors can monitor the patients remotely
3) Making the patient’s information available globally to the healthcare systemTherefore, it is safe to say that mobile solutions for healthcare industry are very beneficial and can help you out in every possible way to improve the business for your healthcare department and at the same time find, locate and help patients from remote backgrounds.