When it comes to healthcare, there are the obvious bottom lines and then there are the conveniences that help patients make their choices. What it comes down to for most people on the consuming end of the healthcare spectrum is cost, which is no surprise. But the big innovations in health technologies that are happening these days are not only helping bring the cost of health down, but also making it more accessible, putting diagnosis tools and communication lines in the hands of those who need them.
A lot has been said about electronic medical records and the cloud services that make them more readily available to doctors with mobile devices. This sort of service adds accessibility in a way that improves the patient experience, but it does so by making the job of the doctor easier. By putting records and reference images in the cloud, patients are on the receiving end of faster diagnoses and therefore quicker treatment and hopefully recovery. But this technology is invisible to the patient, and doesn’t necessarily make help more accessible.
Filling that need for accessibility falls to telehealth technologies like MDLIVE, which recently signed a deal with HealthSparq to provide healthcare on demand options to health plans and employers across the United States. MDLIVE is the largest telehealth network in the country and it allows people to access licensed physicians at all hours of the day, every day of the year, via telephone or over the Internet.
Telehealth offers a virtual space for patients to enter and receive actual medical advice, diagnosis, and prescriptions from professionals. With this kind of solution time is saved, money is saved, and emergency rooms get to stay ready for emergencies instead of common maladies.
Through the partnership with HealthSparq, the MDLIVE technology is expected to help employers cut down on employee medical costs by eliminating the need for many in-office visits. The technology itself has a wider application, of course. Having this attached to health plans is going to give patients more options and allow them to be more in touch with their physician and therefore more conscious of their health.
This option also stands to serve the needs of people living in rural areas, where access to a licensed physician is still not at the top of the list of easy things to get. By adopting this access as a service model for healthcare, employers and health plan providers are going to ensure a future in which everyone can get in touch with a doctor and not have to rely on the sketchy diagnosis provided by Internet research and good luck.
Edited by
Rory J. Thompson
