Cæ flew back home across the darkening skies above Colohen City. The orange Sun had already begun dipping beneath the horizon as the light of day began fading with each passing second.
A cool, evening breeze brushed past him as he surged towards the Elendir Institute of Magic at high speed, eager to spend his time researching the matter. In hindsight, if he had kept his excitement under control, he would have been able to make greater insights into the matter with the doctor.
Even if she disagreed with his idea, she would have pointed him in the direction of the problems that she perceived in the solution that he was trying to achieve.
But alas, by the time he made the connection, he was already too far away to make a U-turn. He highly doubted that the cardiologist would appreciate his making another appointment regarding the matter, given the stern reprimand he had gotten from her.
He would have to make do with what he had.
"Thankfully, Master Zymshire should be able to help me with this matter as well."
Now that he had some inkling of a solution in mind, he could also do more directed and thorough research on this particular niche issue.
He needed a greater number of details regarding the constraints and conditions that surgeries were subject to, and to check whether this model was compatible with each of them. If not, he would need to figure out a way to fulfill the conditions and adhere to the constraints or negate the need for them.
For example, it was possible that there was simply too much information for a senior heart healer to consume for them to perform ten surgeries in one day. Assuming that healer surgeons needed to spend some time studying each healing procedure, then it was entirely possible that multiplying that time by ten was simply impractical or even impossible.
Depending on how much time and energy it took, and how mentally strenuous each surgery was, it was possible that he was simply expecting too much of surgeons to merely perform the most essential part of each surgery.
On the other hand, even if this was the case, it was possible to distill the information to only the bare minimum and essential information on each surgery. Part of going against the standardized model of healthcare meant that senior healers would no longer be required to tend to each patient from start to finish for whatever benefits doing so had.
In fact, in the model that Cæ provided, it wasn't even necessary to have senior healers even know the name of the patient. All they needed to know was what exactly the senior-level parts of the healing surgery were and exactly what they needed to do.
This could be provided by the surgical team of the patient, who would undoubtedly know all the details of the patient.
Cæ wasn't even strictly ditching the personalized model of healthcare, either. Really, he was just delegating it to healers whose skill wasn't really better spent elsewhere. By having senior healers focus exclusively on precisely the tasks that require them specifically, their productivity would drastically increase.
On top of that, the best part was that because their productivity was higher and the number of surgeries being completed was higher, Cæ was relatively confident that he could pay them a higher salary, making it entirely worth it for the doctors, too.
On top of that, with the supply of surgeries increasing, the demand would also increase, while the cost would likely reduce for each individual customer, resulting in a net increase in revenue, which would likely come with a surplus in the number of customers increasing to a much greater degree.
It was a win-win-win all around the board.
He truly couldn't help but wonder why nobody had thought of this yet and implemented it, but upon deeper thought, he could actually understand why.
The paradigms of medicine had already taken shape around the world even before healing magic became a global sector centuries after Great Magus Merlin gave birth to the Awakening of Magic, leading to the Age of Magic to come to be.
Thus, the current model and paradigms were baked into the culture and medicine across human civilization long before the problem that he was trying to solve came to be. They had become so deeply entrenched in the way things were and the very fabric of civilization that people hadn't even fathomed that it was possible that the constraints on the supply of healing magic could be fixed not by some extravagant solution but by simply fixing the fundamental paradigms of medicine.
While both the professor and doctor had spoken of attempts to fix this problem by radically increasing the quality of healing magic education by an order of magnitude to allow apprentice healers to heal deeper tissue despite the risk and danger, Cæ had something much simpler and much more practical in mind.
Rather than trying to increase the number of healers, he simply sought to change the system and make more efficient and effective use of existing healers.
"…But I will need to do a lot of research before I have ironed out all the details."
In business, having a good idea to fix a problem was often the easiest part.
The most difficult part was everything that followed.
The practicality of implementing a solution was what made or broke a capital venture. The devil was always in the details of the business strategy, and he needed to exorcise every single devil from the details of his plans if he had any hope of succeeding.
"…This is going to be even more difficult than my Trinity Housings project." Cæ's stormy, gray eyes sharpened knowingly. "I am dealing with a totally different beast entirely."
With the slums, he knew exactly what he was dealing with because he had lived in the slums for most of his life. He knew the psychology of the people; he knew how they thought, what they behaved like, and exactly what they wanted. That was one of the reasons that he was confident going into a sector that nobody else even fathomed to tap into.
This time, however, he had no such knowledge advantage.
His only experience with the healthcare industry was when he woke up in a hospital six months after the accident that killed Lilia.
He knew nothing about the industry and sector, comparatively.
"Thankfully, I have taken the healing magic class, which should expose me to the industry more comprehensively." His eyes sharpened. "I will make good use of it and the maginet to master every ounce of knowledge I need to know."
This was the phase of market research.
He had grown through the same phase for Trinity Housings as well, despite his familiarity with the matter. Even before he reached out to Feidin, he had fleshed out much of his vision.
"I will need to flesh out my vision with great detail this time as well to an even greater degree, and after that… I will need to find a worthy business partner or two."
He knew he would need to because he wouldn't be able to tackle such a project on his own merit. Even after his market research, he would need someone who has a great grasp of healing surgery, ideally a healing surgeon, as well as someone with the technical know-how to implement the architectural, administrative, and system solutions that he needed.
"I'll need a hospital planner."
It was a highly niche and specialized field in the healthcare industry that was entrusted with designing and organizing healthcare facilities. If he wanted this project to succeed, he would likely need to have one on his team, either as an extremely high-level employee or as a business partner.
A healing surgeon was needed to ensure that there were no holes in the evaluation of all the criteria and constraints and that there were no flaws in the solutions.
Similar to how magineering products needed to be field-tested in order to flush out all the bugs, flaws, and problems, they would need to exhaustively field test the entire facility with an actual healer performing the closest thing to actual healing surgery in the manner that Cæ imagined.
For that, it was best to have a senior healer mage on the team.
While it was possible for them to hire a senior healer mage, Cæ didn't want to let anyone who wasn't firmly invested in the project be exposed to such a core and central part of the solution that he had implemented.
"I'm also going to need a lot of magicapita."
Starting a hospital was much, much harder than launching a housing production company like Trinity Housings. The barrier to entry was much, much higher, and this time, he didn't have the Elendir Institute of Magic supporting his venture, rather generously. He had already used up his reward with the Headmistress for learning who was responsible for Lilia's death.
This meant that he was confronted with the same three options that he had been confronted with when he considered raising magicapita for the expansion of Trinity Housings to other slums across the country.
He could take a loan, a rather hefty loan that would a lot of money and would require him to put up something for collateral, most likely his shares of Trinity Housings, for that was the only thing he owned that would be worth the amount that he would need to build a hospital.
He suspected that not even his identity as a student and his history with Trinity Housings would be enough to get him the needed magicapita without collateral, although it would likely ameliorate the risk factor.
"I could find a private investor."
That was certainly helpful.
A private investor who had some stake in the medicine industry, perhaps? Perhaps somebody with the same goals and interests who would really like to see the supply of healing increase.
This was iffy, for the competition for private investors was sky high, with countless start-ups and businesses trying to earn their attention.
"I could go for public investors, too."
By doing an IPO launch on the Elendir Stock Exchange and raising money by selling shares, he could earn money. However, IPO launches were generally done when one had something to show in terms of results. Otherwise, it would simply come off as hot air to investors who looked into what he had to say.
From his business background, he knew that this was atypical. After all, the only companies in the healthcare sector that sold public equity were large corporations that owned multiple hospitals and well-recognized brands.
"…Ah, well, we can figure that out when we have something to offer in the form of a concrete and clear business strategy and its implementation.
There was a lot of work that he needed to do.
And yet, he looked forward to it.
He wasn't even sure about how profitable this model was; however, he knew that he would be the only one tapping into vast swathes of untapped demand that had no supply. He would also do so at a much lower cost, compared to anything that the competition had to offer. This gave him a unique opportunity to capture much of the market in one fell swoop and establish a permanent stronghold in this sector, as long as he was smart about it.
While these hospitals and companies were much larger than he was, renovating their infrastructure after he had stolen a portion of their revenues would make their jobs much harder. It was much easier starting out with a brand-new business strategy and model than changing it once you had already committed to an old strategy and model. It would take billions of years for them to fully transition into his model.
This was, of course, assuming that he succeeded to the extent that he hoped to.
"I hear no intention of failing."