Categories

Tag: App

Teladoc, CVS, Utilization Rates, & Apple in ‘THE YEAR of Telehealth’

By JESSICA DA MASSA, WTF Health

According to Toby Cosgrove, 2019 is “THE YEAR of telehealth.” The former CEO of Cleveland Clinic, who is currently an executive advisor to Google Cloud’s healthcare and life sciences team, proclaimed it as such to CNBC, saying that this year is “THE YEAR” telehealth becomes ubiquitous.

That’s a pretty bold statement – particularly as utilization rates for virtual visits continue to fall short of expectations – so we double-checked this prognostication with Teladoc’s CEO, Jason Gorevic.

Does he think 2019 is going to be telehealth’s turning point?

Well, although he’d rather call the space ‘virtual care’ instead of ‘telehealth’ (maybe this will be the difference maker?), he confesses he’s pretty much on board with Cosgrove’s assertion that more consumers than ever will visit virtual exam rooms this year.

But, why?

How does 2019 become “THE YEAR” of virtual care? Is this going to be an industry-wide boon, or is Teladoc just banking on its partnership with CVS and their new family member, Aetna?

Tune in to hear Jason get real about what’s impacting utilization rates, how things are going to change this year, AND whether or not he’s worried about competing with Apple, Google, and Amazon for screen time. (Hint: He’s not.)

Apple’s EHR: Why Health Records on Your iPhone is Just the Beginning

Americans on average will visit a care provider about 300 times over the course of their lives. That’s hundreds of blood pressure readings, numerous diagnoses, and hundreds of entries into a patient’s medical record—and that’s potentially with dozens of different doctors. So it’s understandable, inevitable even, that patients would struggle to keep every provider up-to-date on their medical history.

This issue is compounded by much of our healthcare information being fragmented among multiple, incompatible health systems’ electronic health records. The majority of these systems store and exchange health information in unique, often proprietary ways—and thus don’t effectively talk with one another.

Fortunately, recent news from Apple points to a reprieve for patients struggling to keep all of their providers up-to-date. Apple has teamed with roughly a dozen hospitals across the country, including the likes of Geisinger Health, Johns Hopkins Medicine, and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, to make patient’s medical history available to them on their phone. Patients can bring their phone with them to participating health systems and provide caregivers with an up-to-date medical history.

Empowering patients with the ability to carry their health records on their phone is great, and will surely help them overcome the issue of fragmented healthcare records. Yet the underlying standardization of how healthcare data is exchanged that has made this possible is the real feat. In fact, this standardization may potentially pave the way for innovation and rapid expansion of the health information technology (HIT) industry.

Continue reading…

Should Docs Prescribe Data?

Screen Shot 2014-09-15 at 11.47.58 AM

I’ve always been a little skeptical of the push to get doctors to prescribe apps.

To begin with, it would be awfully easy for us to replicate the many problems of medication prescribing. Chief among these is the tendency for doctors to prescribe what’s been marketed to them, rather than what’s actually a good option for the patient, given his or her overall medical situation, preferences, and values.

Then there are the added complexities peculiar to the world of apps, and of using apps.

A medication, once a pharmaceutical company has labored to bring it to market, basically stays the same over time. But an app is an ever-morphing entity, usually updating and changing several times a year. (Unless it stops updating. That’s potentially worse.)

Meanwhile, the mobile devices with which we use apps are *also* constantly evolving, and we’re all basically forced to replace our devices with regularity.

Continue reading…

assetto corsa mods