Worth your time over a long coffee is David Doherty’s lengthy analysis of a recent article published on the CNBC website on the ‘failure’ to date of what was supposed to revolutionize healthcare, the telemedicine ‘video visit’. Mr. Doherty counters point-by-point that the concept of telemedicine is already out of date–that the future of healthcare is with mobile devices, such as the EKG-taking KardiaMobile. He points to the distrust of large telemedicine companies such as Doctor on Demand and American Well as being heavily wedded to health insurers (the prevalent business model), selling/trading patient information, and breaking the individual doctor-patient relationship.
Mr. Doherty sees the future of telemedicine enabling individual doctors to better serve their patients on several levels–video consults, monitoring, and via high-quality apps–seamlessly. But the insurer-employer-practice model is hard to break indeed, as American Well, Teladoc, and Doctor on Demand–all of which started with a DTC model–found out. And reimbursement is improved, but discouraging. mHealth Insight
Thanks for the share Donna.