Over the past 20 years Ian Gallagher has founded, developed and operated a string of successful marketing and new media enterprises. He has championed campaigns for top-tier brands such as Heineken, Vodafone and Diageo and in 2009, foresaw a huge opportunity in the medical tech sector.
Flashforward 10 years, Ian is leading a medical revolution, right here, from the Cayman Islands. His global business Buzz Fit Ltd SEZC is utilising cutting-edge technology to serve up immersive healthcare experiences.
We met with Ian via Skype to discuss his business and how the coronavirus pandemic is further proving the need for increased health literacy globally.
CEC: Tell us a little bit about Buzz Fit Ltd SEZC and the problem that you have set out to solve?
IG: Buzz Fit delivers healthcare content and advertising to patients and doctors waiting rooms. We’re kind of at the intersection of doctors’ desire to keep their patients entertained, patients’ need for health information and healthcare advertisers’ desire to be able to speak to that audience. There are 530,000 medical offices in the United States. They lose about 30% of their patients annually, which is the biggest loss of revenue for them. This content allows them to increase patient retention, increase their professional reputation and increase revenue right across all metrics.
On the patient side, 82% of the US population was considered health illiterate in 2006, which was a third more than any other developed nation in the world. Between 2006 and 2018, 90% of the US population is now considered to be health illiterate. Health illiteracy, by definition, is the degree to which individuals are capable to obtain, process and understand health information. So ultimately, my initial goal when I started this business was to increase the overall health literacy in the United States. People can’t find the information they want in a language they understand from a brand they can trust. If you teach people how to best take care of themselves, understand the importance of nutrition and what they put in their bodies, sleeping and exercise, that is what is going to go the furthest.
CEC: What made setting up your business in the Cayman Islands so attractive?
IG: Buzz Fit moved to the Cayman Islands, specifically to CEC, because of the intrinsic benefits of making such a move. The idea was to create a co-op in order to allow physicians to come on board and become investors in this. However, US law limits the number of members per business type. What we wanted to be able to do was get 5,000 physicians to buy into this project and through that we would have the swelling ground force of people who would be happy to push and promote the company and take it on and make it their own.
That was really what was going to allow us to become this sticky brand in market that physicians would happily adopt and want to participate in. Setting up in Cayman allows us to have that presence and that co-op type of model.
CEC: You mentioned that CEC is an excellent platform to launch businesses from and to raise capital. Can you explain why this was imperative to your business model?
IG: When I first got to Cayman, I had a huge amount of trouble raising the capital I needed for this business. While all the development was done, the next stage and last step in order to become successful was to raise the capital to get in the market. We weren't able to do that in isolation, but thankfully in CEC there was another company, Tandem, who are able to facilitate those meetings. It was within the creative mechanism of CEC that helped me to get that face time.
CEC: Tell us a bit about your team. What are some of your company’s most noteworthy successes and how do you see the company evolving over the next couple of years?
IG: Our team has diverse professional expertise. I come from a whole series of different ventures. Michael Brennan (COO) was accountable to the Vice President of PepsiCo Global and ran an elite organisation to deal with their $21 billion brands. Andrei Prokofev (CTO), rocket engineer turned code programmer, has done absolutely everything and was working as head of development for the most respected web design firms. We’re breaking new grounds in terms of how we acquire advertising and Conor Burgess (Board member) is at the tip of the spear regarding the development of this industry. So, Buzz Fit is a result of bringing all these years of expertise in advertising and healthcare, supported by our world class team.
In terms of successes, we launched 6 weeks ago using 20,000 of our 1.6 million contacts. We now have access to over 30,000 US healthcare consumers. By 2024, the healthcare advertising market in the United States will be worth a staggering $82 billion. We intend to acquire a 5.53% market share of doctors’ offices and 0.078% of healthcare advertising inventory in 3 years which will result in over $100 million in revenue.
Are you an innovative business is the quest for growth? CEC is here to help! We make growing an international business from the Cayman Islands easy, affordable and functional. If you would like to learn more about our services visit our business set-up page.