Hoolux Medical: latest startup in the ‘blaring economy’

How long until the advertising we see on the sides of buses changes when we look at it?

The Minority Report future appears to be inching ever closer. The latest evidence comes in the form of Hoolux Medical, a Williamsburg-based hardware startup focused on delivering demographically-targeted medical advertising via the TVs in doctors’ waiting rooms.

One downside of the rise of tech and the ever-decreasing cost of flatscreen televisions is their entry into every possible space, especially waiting areas. As if they weren’t too bright, too loud and too much already, those screens are becoming less content-delivery devices and more advertising platforms. Sensor technologies are only going to accelerate this trend deeper into, let’s face it, the blaring economy.

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Hoolux Medical has a system that makes sure to feed patients a steady stream of pitches during a moment when many people might like to be alone with their thoughts: while waiting to see a physician.

The company is showing progress in realizing its vision of, as its LinkedIn page puts it, enabling “pharmaceutical and other healthcare companies to target customers directly in point of care locations.” Mia Logan, from the company’s marketing team, wrote us, “We’ve made significant progress thus far as we’ve moved 192 units out of 360 available. Our goal is to have a Hoolux Medical device in every waiting room across the country.” We previously covered the company’s $285,000 equity round.

Even better: physicians earn money for every ad served to patients, meaning adoptees have an incentive to make you sit there for a while. Outstanding. This reporter had a doctor in D.C. who would see him within ten minutes of your arrival in his office, more often than not. It was remarkable. He wouldn’t have earned much revenue from Hoolux, though.

So how does it work? The video below breaks it down well. A Kinect-like device is attached to a clinician’s television in his or her waiting room. It reads the gender and age of the people sitting in front of it and serves up appropriate ads to those patients, based on that info.

We asked Hoolux whether it was concerned that it was adding to the din that consumers are already subjected to.

Logan told us that that din is a fact of modern life, adding, “The difference with Hoolux is that we do not aggressively target consumers to convert sales; we simply provide a platform for health professionals to share information. A patient visiting a waiting room is likely to see a TV screen regardless, Hoolux Medical is ensuring that what’s displayed on the screen is truly relevant to what patients need to see.”