We have been using telemedicine to test-drive remote care delivery tools for 70 years. This testing has been vital because the health care industry changes slowly, but it’s finally time to take off the telemedicine training wheels. After 70 years of pilots, trials and tests, we are ready for a more mature, durable set of tools – ready for substantive change, and that change is virtual care.

Virtual care is the digital progenitor of telemedicine. Incorporating multiple care modalities, virtual care is more than just a phone call or video chat. It leverages store-and-forward technology to collect and organize patient-provided health history and symptom information, allowing clinicians to access it in real time or at a later date. Health care professionals are then able to make a diagnosis and develop a recommended treatment plan, which is sent back to the patient. Virtual care is meeting the new demands of patients and businesses by mimicking the disruptive shift Netflix brought to movie rentals. It is logical, device agnostic and data driven, with no reliance on physical objects. In order to address the industry’s head-on challenges, virtual care breaks down data silos that interrupt efficient and effective health care delivery and uncorks pent-up economic innovation in the industry.


Moving from traditional to virtual
While the telemedicine market is on the growth curve for the next 10 years, the industry is already seeing the existing technology as falling short of effectively supporting both providers and patients. Frankly, traditional telemedicine is overrated. The technology is simply not living up to the hype, by failing to address the pain points of the health care industry. When thinking about telemedicine and its capabilities, it is not that different from an in-person visit from both a patient and provider perspective. An in-person appointment can take only 10 minutes, where a video visit usually lasts 30 minutes. The patient may be in the comfort of their home, but they aren’t experiencing any other significant benefit – and the clinician is spending more time delivering care.

Virtual care removes the limitations of telemedicine by integrating an innovative approach that aligns with the patient’s life and the provider’s workflow. Patients can be treated quickly and easily from the comfort of their own home or in the office, and physicians can provide care when and where their clinical schedules allow. This enhances efficiency by enabling physicians to treat more patients in the same amount of time an in-person visit takes, and directly saving visit data into the EMR. As such, virtual care significantly reduces the clerical burden of aggregating patient data and allows physicians to spend more time focusing on patient needs, reducing a key cause of burnout and helping to mitigate the physician shortage. Speed and efficiency are only part of the equation. Physicians can feel confident they are providing high quality care, as well. Through complex, intelligent algorithms, this digital technology provides physicians with more useful, less intrusive clinical decision support, giving them the information necessary to make the best, most accurate decisions for the patient. The clinical decision support combined with curated diagnosis and treatment guidelines helps providers achieve antibiotic stewardship goals and care quality objectives. Virtual care is the perfect combination of technology and experience that surpasses the current industry’s standards without forgoing quality and efficiency.

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