Telemedicine has fostered a series of ways to reduce the number of people using emergency rooms for non-emergency needs.
A recent competition from Philadelphia regional payer Independence Blue Cross, looking for ways to improve health and wellness, awarded two companies for their solutions in these areas that signify the big trends in healthcare technology, according to a story by Stephanie Baum.
The IBX Game Changers Challenge selected 1DocWay, QuickSeeMD, and a company developed to help teach how to prepare nutritious, tasty foods – Food Cred – to receive a $50,000 grant toward “implementation of their proposed products or programs and up to three months of office space, business support and advisory services at Venturef0rth, a Philadelphia incubator,” Baum reported.
The winners will also receive business mentoring from Wharton Entrepreneurial programs and a consulting session with What If! Innovation Partners to help develop their concepts for maximum impact.
1DocWay’s telemedicine service provides access to psychiatrists for people who suffer from mood disorders through an Internet video linkup, especially useful for people in underserved areas of the U.S. who may have a hard time getting to doctors in their area, or who have no doctors in their area.
This kind of medical care is now taking place across the country, helping many who would have no way of seeking this type of treatment otherwise.
Prisons are also using telemedicine to provide access to mental health counselors to their inmates.
The resulting cuts in travel costs, and more productive collaboration among medical professionals, are just two of the factors driving increasing demand for telepresence in the health sector, making it more popular than most remote diagnostic applications.
QuickSeeMD, a health IT company which won Philadelphia’s StartUp Weekend Health’s inaugural event in June, helps users find healthcare alternatives to emergency rooms.
Startup Weekend is an “intense 54-hour event which focuses on building a Web or mobile application which could form the basis of a credible business over the course of a weekend,” according to the event’s website.
The Independence Blue Cross winners were selected among nine other finalists, Baum noted. Companies were judged on the health problem the companies address, the impact they will have on the problem, how innovative and creative the idea is, the practicality of the idea, and the team working to build the idea into a sustainable product or program.
Edited by
Braden Becker
