HEALTHCARE DIGITAL ADOPTION: TELEHEALTH UP 2000%
βConsumer electronics like phones or laptops are now essential medical technology, as doctors visits have transitioned from medical offices to your home. Via, of course, video live-streaming.Β Β βVonage drives virtually all of the major telehealth providers throughout the world,β says CEO Alan Masarek recently on the TechFirst podcast. βAnd weβve seen literally in the last month a 2,000% increase in video usage in the telehealth vertical.ββ BARE shares an article byΒ John KoetsierΒ forΒ Forbes Consumer TechΒ on theΒ unprecedented increase in telehealthΒ and online video usage as industries shift into digital adoption amongst COVID-19.
As much as our entire reality in the Coronavirus era, thisΒ massive increase in video usageΒ is unprecedented. Masarek says heβs never seen anything like it before.
βNo, not in such a short period of time. It is just this amazing spike.β
One customer,Β Doxy.me, reported 139,000 new providers β doctors, medical offices, healthcare professionals β in just one week. They served 1.35 million patients in that week,Β averaging almost 21 million video minutes for 170,000 calls each day. Another customer, Doctolib, is doing 100,000 video consultations every single day.
Itβs unprecedented, but we probably shouldnβt be surprised.
Essentially what weβre seeing is the wholesale shift of an entire profession from physical to digital spaces. With aroundΒ a millionΒ active doctors in the U.S., thatβs a lot of visits to replace: easily 20 to 30 million each and every day.
Amazingly, our internet hasnβt crumbled under the strain.
βItβs a micro-services architected solution thatβs run fully on the public cloud,β Masarek says. βSo as you see one element spike, like weβre seeing with video, you have limitless scalability. And so thatβs been very, very important to accommodate in virtually overnight fashion this massive increase in volume while maintaining very high quality video, very high security levels.β
Not everything works on video and audio, however.
Itβs hard to take a pulse, or check reflexes by bouncing a mallet on your knee. Itβs hard to listen to a patientβs breathing, or take a close look at a skin condition.
New technology could help, of course. YourΒ smartwatchΒ could probably send doctors data on your pulse, EKG data, as well as activity data, and maybe even your blood pressure. Other wearable technology devices could provide data on temperature, sleeping habits, activity, blood oxygen levels, and more.
But they would need to be widespread, and there would need to be safe, privacy-compliant ways to transmit the data.
Masarek says he thinks this is simply the acceleration of a trend that has long-term potential, and that telemedicine will keep growing even if the current COVID-19 social distancing restrictions are lifted.
βI think that slope may not be as steep as it is right at this moment, but that slope is going to remain very steep because itβs the perfect way to triage healthcare,β he told me. βSo rather than waiting for a hospital admission, an ER admission, or even just going to your local physician, an opportunity for someone to see you immediately and assess whatβs going on with you as a patient, is critically important, and I think youβre going to see more of that.β
The full transcript of our conversation is available here.β
Read theΒ original article here.
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DisclaimerΒ ofΒ endorsement: Any reference obtained from this article to a specific product, process, or service does notΒ constitute or imply anΒ endorsement by BARE International of the product, process, or service, or its producer or provider.
