The Rise of Virtual Care, COVID19 and its future

What are the major categories under Virtual Care ?

Virtual care is a broad term that encompasses all the ways healthcare providers remotely interact with their patients. In addition to treating patients via telemedicine, providers may use live video, audio, and instant messaging to communicate with their patients remotely. According to @GEhealthcare, they define it under three major segments.

Doctor on Demand video-based interactions are leading to rewarding relationships between patients and physicians and improved patient satisfaction despite spending less time on screen via the virtual care method suggests a study by @MayoClinic Telehealth provides a great digital patient experience for patients to interact with their physicians at their own access and convenience. There is a huge potential to further improve these digital interactions by focusing on the user experience by being empathetic and using design thinking while designing these seamless digital patient experiences.

There is a new phenomenon Hospital at Home (HaH) model which is ripe for virtual disruption—especially for elderly patients who are vulnerable to healthcare-associated infections and other complications of inpatient care.

Some stats of where the Telehealth market is headed

Telehealth market is set to reach $130 billion by 2025. Virtual health-care interactions could reach 1 billion by year’s end, according to analysts at @Forrester Research.

Even before the current COVDI19 pandemic, in 2019 McKinsey’s survey of more than 60 health system executives, one-third of respondents indicated they planned to decrease capital investments as a result of the shift to virtual health.

How has COVID19 expanded the ‘Tele’ health market?

COVID-19 is proliferating technology in healthcare just like many other industries that are getting disrupted. Telehealth is being used across the world to ensure only the right patients come to the hospitals not only helping the healthcare systems manage their capacities but also playing a pivotal role in flattening the curve with people getting online remote counselling from doctors and not moving around spreading the virus. It is significant as there is shortage of hospital staff and professionals especially in countries badly affected by COVID19.

The COVID19 pandemic crisis and emergency has forced the governments and healthcare regulators to temporarily ease the regulations like US not enforcing HIPAA privacy law penalties on telehealth and virtual care. But there are increasingly calls to permanently relax the barriers in the US. 

Previously, telehealth use in medicare was severely restricted to specific locations and circumstances, like for beneficiaries in rural areas or patients already in a hospital. 

Telehealth and Telepsychiatry apps usage will rise further as more and more people use their services. Even companies preparing from the return of their employees to offices will be subscribing to such mental wellness sessions and packages. @Salesforce’s @Marc Benioff said 36% of his employees have reported having mental health issues during the lockdown

Notable Use Cases of Telehealth by companies

•  Royal Philips a global leader in health technology has partnered with the American Telemedicine Association (ATA) to help further the adoption of telehealth across the industry, demonstrating its commitment to connecting care across acute, post-acute and home care settings.
• The Payers and health insurers perspective like CVS Health, Aetna, Cigna are recommending patients move to virtual care.
• #GE Healthcare and #Microsoft are launching a Virtual ICU offering called Mural Virtual Care that reduces the burden on professionals by allowing them to care for multiple ICU patients including ventilated remotely.
• @Vezeeta is a telehealth startup riding on the wave and extending seamless access to medical care, without having to physically visit a hospital or clinic with the top doctors in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The appointments happen via phone calls, videos and schedule ‘Home Visits’ at special rates. They went into a partnership with @STC, a leading Saudi Telco operator to extend access to remote health services to STC employees. So far over 2million Saudis book their appointments through the App.

Parting notes on Future of Telehealth

Whilst we predict the post COVID-19 world, one thing is for sure Telehealth will certainly have a huge role to play in healthcare and also the cost of receiving healthcare as the geography constraint goes away. Technology will flip healthcare from scarcity to abundance as @Peter Diamandis from @Singularity University has written in his book Abundance. Artificial Intelligence AI based systems can be an initial stop before getting a face time with a doctor which would create large data sets for further analytics. However, Post-COVID, the question remains whether the loosened restrictions will be sustained in the months and years ahead.