25 ways you can use telemedicine

Reposted from a Boston Globe article. BY HARVARD PILGRIM HEALTH CARE | May 1, 2020

From checking symptoms to seeking emotional support, virtual care can help.

BY HARVARD PILGRIM HEALTH CARE | May 1, 2020
You’ve probably heard the term “telemedicine,” but you may not be familiar with what it means. Put simply, telemedicine gives you access to virtual medical and behavioral health visits, via phone or video chat, with licensed health care professionals. Instead of traveling to see your doctor and sitting in a crowded waiting room, you’re instantly connected using your computer, tablet or smartphone for a visit, without putting yourself at risk for exposure to COVID-19.

 

The Missing Element in Remote Care: Patient Pull

There are large benefits from being able to efficiently and systematically engage and problem-solve with patients. Medical providers want it badly, but the touch-points they have are few and the face-to-face ones are expensive.

 

Providers liked what digital solutions offered, and they waded in. Instead, the medical world is now filled with apps and websites that don’t systematically engage with more than a small number of patients. The problem remains unsolved.

 

Patients, like consumers, are difficult to engage. Engagement only comes when significant and specific user needs are easily met by the digital solution. We call this user pull. So, we start when the patient need is the most acute: when they are about to undergo a significant procedure.

We satisfy that patient need for clear, immediate, and usable support.

 

With that engagement we truly deliver systemic results to all three main players: better patient health outcomes, improved hospital finances, and happier and more productive practitioners. Think data too: symptoms, triage results, protocol adherence, etc. While those returns are more than sufficient, we will also have a relationship with the patient. Some of those relationships can be short-lived; many others are not. This permits us to include an interface for monitoring and diagnosis devices, wellness solutions, longer-term care protocols, and clinical trials.

Dr. Thomas A. Poynter

 

 

 

PatientApps launches first App of its planned suite of 150 procedure apps. 

 

The first app is Childbirth!
 

The world of medical procedures needs solutions to affect patient re-admissions, health outcomes, excessive patient-physician interaction, day-of-surgery cancellations, hospital length-of-stay, protocol testing, and patient “likes”. 

 

Using the leading self-learning technologies, PatientApps has some solutions.  We are happy to announce the launch of our service providing remote support to patients undergoing a procedure. 

 

Each app provides a message from the physician, a full procedure description, any alternative solutions, hour-by-hour pre and post-procedure protocols, and a full symptom triage with communications linked to appropriate hospital sources.  Apps are edited, authored, and reviewed by leading practitioners, and employ PatientApp’s consumer-learning skills to ensure patient engagement.

 

We will cover 150-200 individual procedures ranging from Obstetrical, Bariatric, to Orthopedic procedures using user-friendly apps distributed by physicians to their patients. Universally, patients and providers say they want this.

 

Apps are white-labeled for each hospital and – if needed - physician.  Care instructions can be quickly tailored for each physician’s preferences.

 

We launch with Childbirth, followed by bariatric and several other Obstetric procedures, then over 20 Minimally Invasive Surgery procedures in English.  Other procedures and languages follow later in Q1 2019.

 

We expect to avoid typical mHealth barriers because implementation is done within hours and at minimal cost.  No mind-numbing EHR integration, and no need for HIPAA compliance. 

 

Our apps operate on all recent devices, all recent O/S, and all screen sizes – you don’t need an app store.  We are truly patient-centric.

 

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