Remember how Mom always used to tell you that “an apple a day keeps the doctor away”? Nowadays, maybe the doctor won’t be so easy to keep away—they can come to you via your mobile device.
Verizon’s Virtual Visits platform allows users to connect with medical professionals via smartphones, tablets or PCs to address nonemergency medical issues. It combines connectivity services with an unidentified third-party medical provider network. Here, the patient registers through a mobile app, and once the company has gathered his medical information and verified his co-pay, the doctor can initiate a video chat regarding the health issue.
The move by Verizon has been a long time coming; the provider is already so focused on connection of phone lines, Internet and broadband TV that perhaps it was a only a matter of time before the human body was thrown into the mix. What’s more, Verizon has been making moves in the field of telehealth for some time now. In March of 2013, the company unveiled its Secure Universal Messaging System (SUMS), designed to allow healthcare providers to exchange clinical information over any Web browser.
In October of the same year, Verizon launched Converged Health Management, a remote patient monitoring software platform that lets doctors check in on patients between medical visits; this service also provided biometric devices within the software that transmitted data like blood pressure, oxygen saturation levels, glucose and the like through a wireless connection. Patients and doctors alike can access this information via a mobile app.
Telehealth may be in its infancy as an industry, but if Verizon and its competitors continue to make the effort, the market could quickly expand.
Edited by
Adam Brandt
