Healthcare Technology Featured Article

August 07, 2014

Wheelings & Dealings: Doctor on Demand Hits it Big on Funding, Signs Major New Customer


The idea that a doctor would ever come out to your house, unless you were having a party and invited said doctor over, is one that for the most part went out with “The Donna Reed Show.” But the rise of communications technology is shaking even that picture up, because now, it's possible for a doctor to come to your house without ever leaving the office. This concept is made quite clear with Doctor on Demand, a new service that's bringing the doctor to the home, and bringing along some very big names for the ride.

Doctor on Demand is a fairly simple concept that, much as the name pretty much spells out, brings a doctor into a user's house via video conferencing mechanism for the low cost of $40 per connection. Thanks to the new funding, the company is bringing the service not only to mobile devices, but for use in a Web app that opens up the field to desktops and laptops as well. Using a network that's considered secure under Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) standards, the connection allows for the fairly rapid addressing of certain issues, particularly those that don't need things like lab work or specialized medical imaging. Things like coughs, allergies, sore throats and such simple matters seem covered, though the app itself is best considered for the full list.

The service completed a Series A funding round, which in turn brought in $21 million from a series of investors ranging from Shasta Ventures to Sir Richard Branson. This is in addition to an earlier round of funding from back in December that reportedly brought in $3 million by itself. But Doctor on Demand doesn't just have interest from investors; it also has interest from Comcast, who is serving as one of the apps first major customers, integrating Doctor on Demand visits into its health care coverage. Comcast reportedly represents the first major company to do this as well, serving as quite a show of support for the app.

Doctor on Demand, essentially, does for healthcare what an interactive voice response (IVR) system does for call center operations, only with the added benefit of having a real human around. Doctor on Demand allows users to quickly spot the difference between simple and complex problems, allowing the simple problems to be handled at the Doctor on Demand level and the complex problems to be referred elsewhere. That prevents the “elsewhere” part of the equation from having to focus on the simple stuff, and thus frees up resources. That in turn makes the whole system run more smoothly, which means fewer resources needed to run it and, eventually, improved services and reduced costs.

Will Doctor on Demand change healthcare as we know it? Alone, probably not; but as part of a growing trend of telecommunications technologies designed to help simple problems be solved at home, things like Doctor on Demand could be the biggest game-changers yet. The house call may well have made a triumphant return, thanks to the idea that doctors no longer need to leave offices to be just as close to patients' homes as if said doctors had left.




Edited by Maurice Nagle
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