[buro9]

Go to a local dentist, look at how they do things like X-Rays.

What you will find is that they pay GBP 20k+ for an X-Ray machine that connects via USB Dongle to an old Windows machine... really old.

You'll also find that all of their equipment is old copies of Windows, in dusty long-unsupported equipment.

Sell a service, that virtualises all of this and that you manage. Charge them GBP 250 per month for it, on top of any capital expenditure up to GBP 3k for the host server (probably on-site as a Dentist shouldn't go down when an internet connection goes down).

Now go round the other dentists in the area and repeat until you have 20 dentists on-board.

You now have GBP 5k per month in residual income, for hardware that will take minimal effort to support, and for images of Windows taken from existing machines that are now backed-up.

The lesson here: You're probably looking for some complex and advanced solution that you can automate to great fortune!... but actually there's a lot of money just begging to be given to people who solve the simplest stuff in fields where the computing skill is very very low but the expectations of computing and value from it is very high.

Your profit exists in that space. No-one is doing the simple stuff in those fields.

Other ideas: Beauty/Hair Salon booking systems that work inside the hairdresser and whose web and automated phone system actually works too (Twilio + Google Apps (for Calendar and Google Contacts) + a website will do this with medium effort - it's a small integration project).

The other lesson here: It's not doing stuff that is hard, but selling it.

[ryanackley]

actually there's a lot of money just begging to be given to people who solve the simplest stuff in fields where the computing skill is very very low but the expectations of computing and value from it is very high.

This is true...but dentistry is not one of those fields. There are many companies that already do IT for dentistry. Source: my uncle is a dentist. He has been with the same company since 2004.

[buro9]

The last time I was in my local dentist I was the first patient of the day and the Windows machine needed rebooting as it didn't see the USB dongle. We got chatting about the fact that it was Windows XP, and her fear that the machine would die but she couldn't upgrade as that specific X-Ray machine was only supported by Win XP (and wasn't purchased too many years ago - the company selling the X-Ray dongle provided the whole solution).

I thought of the above solution whilst there, asked her if anyone did such a thing, and the answer was no-one she knew of. I'm happily employed, but she was fairly desperate to pay that much immediately if it could mitigate the risk of that equipment failing on her suddenly and with a very expensive bill.

[kohanz]

My impression is that dentists are a lot like other sole proprietors, you will find some that keep up with technology and others that don't. I have visited fairly high-tech dentistry offices, with technology that appears to have been developed within the last 5 years at most. I also have a few friends who are (recently graduated) dentists and they are driving adoption of newer technology in their offices. Your local dentist may just not be informed of what's available. A quick search shows that Dentistry SAAS does exist (http://www.curvedental.com/).

[Scarblac]

X-Ray machines are probably heavily regulated, would it even be legal for a third party to change that hardware setup?

[TurnipTheBeet]

Most of the machines that you'll find in a small office are actually two separate devices. There's the x-ray emitter and an x-ray sensor. The sensor replaces the x-ray film that had to be manually developed, and is often just a USB device that integrates with whatever imaging application is in place. The sensors can be installed by anyone for the most part.

[TurnipTheBeet]

This is a fantastic idea that I've often considered myself. I work for a dental school and regularly interact with faculty members that continue to maintain their own private practice offices. Some of the more tech savvy dentists manage their own systems, while others have "a guy" that takes care of it. Both of those scenarios scare the hell out of me.

Getting an EHR or imaging system up and running for a small office is for the most part straight forward. Getting those systems configured correctly is where things start to fall apart. Things like backups, disaster recovery, HIPAA and PCI compliance are easy to overlook or screw up.

Vendors aren't much better. I work with a number of systems that would be out of compliance had we followed the vendor's recommended method of deployment. Technical support from these companies are spotty at best.

That being said, there are only a few big names that are used by the majority of practices. If you can get in there and really learn the systems and make things "just work" then you'd be in a great position to sell your services.

[GFischer]

I've seen startups addressing all of those fields (example: http://www.rockerhair.com/ for beauty salon booking systems), but, quoting William Gibson, "the future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed"