Business Conjecture: Gauge
The current healthcare system faces an increasing burden with staff shortages and increasing rates of chronic diseases, among many other contributing factors. This is where other non-traditional healthcare systems or businesses could step in to help ease that burden. One current example is the tattoo studio; The Lucky Turtle Tattoos. Tattoo artist Lee Nicholls uses his skillset and business to complimentarily cover up self-harm scars and direct people to available mental health resources. (Ashford, 2026) Inspired by this idea, Gauge would utilize community centers as a center for care. Community centers serve as a public hub where residents can access health, recreational, educational, and cultural resources, among many others. They are also usually centrally located, often near parks, schools, libraries, or other resources that make public access easier. This would allow local residents a more accessible location for care than some healthcare facilities.
Gauge would act as a sort of preventative care checkup clinic. Preventative care is an important service that can improve health and life outcomes by catching conditions early on for more effective treatment. The clinic would be staffed with certified nurses and possibly a physician. It would utilize health technologies to track and monitor health markers that are important to assessing one's health and condition. These could include, but are not limited to blood pressure, cholesterol levels, oxygen saturation, and insulin levels. With the help of medical machine learning models and nurse expertise, people could walk away with a more comprehensive view of their basic current health conditions. Some suggestions on how to improve their health could also be included. With the clinic being more easily accessible, the idea would be that local community members would use this service more often to more comprehensively track their health. This could not only be helpful for the individual in understanding what changes they need to make, but it could also help provide healthcare providers a more consistent and comprehensive picture of that individual’s health. A set of tests done once a year at the primary care physician can be very helpful, but having a consistent set of health data could be much more informative to one’s condition.
While this is not intended to replace regular healthcare services, it provides an opportunity for individuals to take more autonomy and ownership of their health. Building smaller, healthier habits will be much easier than trying to drastically change one's lifestyle quickly. One of the largest barriers to this would be funding. However, the ACCESS Model (Advancing Chronic Care with Effective, Scalable Solutions) is rolling out a ten-year voluntary program that is encouraging health technology companies to help individuals on Medicare manage and improve their chronic illnesses. (Vaidya, 2026) If this is successful, there could be more opportunity for more preventative health related endeavors.
References
Ashford, C. (2026, September 9). Whitchurch Tattoo Studio covers up self-harm scars for free. BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly53g7gp1go
Vaidya, A. (2026, September 16). CMS to add more chronic conditions to access model in 2027 | healthcare dive. HealthcareDive. https://www.healthcaredive.com/news/cms-add-more-chronic-conditions-access-model-2027/830506/
No generative AI was used in the writing of this post
