Video Is About to Become the Way We All Visit the Doctor Wired
Re-imbursed by
- UnitedHealthcare (US largest?),
- Oscar,
- WellPoint
- BlueCross BlueShield plans (some)
Advantages of telemedicine to the consumer
- Access
- Immediacy (24 hours a day, 7 days a week)
- Convenience
Example – working mother: “can’t take a day off of work to bring child to the doctor whenever they have the sniffles. Instead, they can fire up their phones, wait a couple minutes, and have access to one of 1,400 licensed physicians, who can provide them with a diagnosis and a prescription all by video”
Advantage to health insurer :
- lower cost of a ”visit”
- fast access will reduce the problem getting worse/more expensive
Example US companies providing this online service via computers, smartphones, tablets,etc are
https://nowclinic.com/landing.htm
http://www.doctorondemand.com/
https://www.americanwell.com/
Observations by VitaminDWiki
- Your personal doctor will rarely be the video conference doctor (currently)
- Hope that virtual doctor will have access to your medical records, prescriptions, etc - in the future
- Hope that you will be able to access the same doctor for follow-up "visits"
- Hope that they will have some easy way of comunicating prescriptions to your local pharmacy
- Dr. Watson (computer program which already passes med school final exams) will be available in a few years to
Virtual doctors, your personal doctor, yourself
And will have perfect access to millions of medical cases