In a very detailed article, Jane Sarasohn-Khan, author of the famous blog HealthPopuli, describes 2009 as “a year of  managing risks”. Healthcare consumers are starting to modify their habits, mainly driven by the rising costs. As a consequence, delaying on healthcare spendings, in a non-rational manner like cuts on refill and canceled visits, is getting more and more common. In that sense, Jane predicts that consumer habits will drastically change and people will adapt to the current economic climate by  seeking health alternatives, especially the ones without health insurance. Citizens will be driven to seek health alternatives:

“Americans who don’t have access to health insurance are already well down the path of seeking alternatives to traditional health channels in the U.S. – hospitals, doctors, prescription drugs. If Americans who are insured — and especially those who are underinsured — don’t perceive their health plan or providers can respond to their needs, they’ll also look elsewhere. I see 2009 as the watershed year kicking on the on-your-own health era for millions of Americans. Investors are already wincing about feeling on-their-own vis-a-vis their banks and 401(k) service providers. We’ve entered the same for health care with out-of-pockets and premiums reaching 40% sharing between insureds and employers providing health insurance. The umbrella for this is Whole Health, Integrative Health, Complementary Medicine, and other monikers. We’ll see a proliferation of services and online tools to help people help themselves and find support. A growing number of western-trained MDs have begun to learn integrative healing methods and we’ll begin to see the field move from anecdotal- to evidence-based care.“

The best way to promote your health IT efforts is having someone from the field that believes in your product or service and takes the reins of your evangelisation efforts. What’s better than a physician bought to your idea to convince others.

“When it comes to promoting health IT, companies should name their ‘champions’
Having a “physician champion” – someone who believes a product is a good idea and can convince others of that fact – is critical to the success of technology implementation efforts, according to healthcare experts.”

N.B. The link to the full article will be available soon.

When technology is used to enhance a current established practice like healthcare, success is always on the way. In the following, I am reporting an article about how indian physicians are making a radiology diagnosis, thousands of miles away from the patients. The practice is called teleradiology. Soon other specialties like dermatology will use telemedicine to provide instant diagnosis.

“BANGALORE (Reuters) - On a computer monitor in his office in the high-tech hub of Bangalore, Indian radiologist Arjun Kalyanpur examines a scan of the skull of a six-year-old boy who fell off his bicycle.

A few minutes later, thousands of miles away, doctors at a hospital in Philadelphia prepare the boy for surgery after receiving an urgent email from Kalyanpur diagnosing a subdural hemorrhage in the child’s brain.

It’s the middle of the night in the United States, but it’s daytime in Bangalore and Kalyanpur and his team of 35 radiologists are reading hundreds of scans sent by hospitals across the United States during the night shift.

“ERs in the U.S. find it difficult to staff at night. There’s a radiologist shortage in the U.S. as well,” Kalyanpur told Reuters.

Bangalore, the outsourcing capital of the world, is becoming a global center for telemedicine thanks to a pool of Western educated doctors, extensive outsourcing infrastructure, lower costs and a convenient time zone to diagnose medical conditions during the U.S. night.

Teleradiologists in India read x-rays, CT scans, MRIs and other medical images of patients in the United States, Singapore and a host of other countries around the world.

It’s ideal for hospitals facing ballooning costs and a shortage of radiologists. And it’s not just teleradiology, experts say just about every area of medicine that does not require direct patient interaction could be outsourced in the future.

This could include scans of pathology samples, ECGs, EEGs and other diagnostic systems used to determine a preliminary diagnosis.

“Telemedicine is on the rise,” said Avinash Vashistha, the CEO of Tholon Inc, a private equity advisory firm, who has written a book about outsourcing.

“Once it acquires critical mass in 2 to 3 years, we expect the thrust to come from insurance companies as they recognize the cost benefits and lower premiums for the plans that have components of telemedicine.”

There are some concerns, though, that it might lead to dangerous misdiagnosis and even those in the industry admit that regulation hasn’t caught up with technology when it comes to medical malpractice, ethics and legal liability.”

Find the full article here.

“A new study by Microsoft researchers suggests that persons who consult the Internet for self-diagnosis of medical conditions typically end up with the wrong conclusions. The report is the first to take a systematic look at “cyberchondria,” the practice of leaping to dire conclusions while researching health matters online, according to Eric Horvitz, an artificial intelligence researcher at Microsoft. Many people, he said, treat search engines as if they can answer questions like a human expert. Microsoft researchers note that they did not intend to send the message that people should completely ignore medical symptoms. But they do need to consider lesser illnesses as well as more deadly ones if they search online. “People tend to look at just the first couple results,” Horvitz said.”

My point is that the Internet will never be a physician. Microsoft has clearly stated that they are going to face difficulties in developing intelligent search engines that will resolve internet search patterns letting them look for at the right places; they want to enhance the actual search. But the real question is the following: Is enough to simply enhance the actual search to provide valid results for users?  The short answer is no, and the guys at Miscrosoft are honest enough to admit it. At Your TeleDoctor we are tackling the same problem, but instead of leading into a very hazardeous route, we prefer to use the internet for what it is for: An way to enhance communications and to add value to healthcare consumers by offering real services through this medium, remotely. We add a missing element to the value chain. People will keep looking for health information online, because it is a more convienient way to verify health issues and also a faster way as medicine is not an exact science and will never be. In the other hand, they want a more convinient way to confirm this information with a qualified physician.