Since we are heading towards a possible economic recession, people will be very attentive at their spendings, by this means people will buy what they urgently need. And while healthcare is one of the priorities with food expenses and housing, we can expect that a cut on that budget occurs, especially for the category that pays for the visits.

In that sense how can we keep with health expenses when our overall budget is tightening? You cut on on your healthcare budget waiting for better times? This is certainly the immediate solution, still, it does not solve the problem, as ignoring your condition will just make it harder to diagnosis and to treat.   Afterall, and we all agree, our health is our most precious capital. What if you could access healthcare services from the comfort of your home, without having to take a day off for a doctor visit and most importantly at an affordable price?

In fact, when considering an online visit, we profit from the following benefits:

-The online consultation’s price is lower than a visit to the emergency room or at a doctor’s office. In the United States for instance, it costs as high as $140 per visit to the emergency room while teleconsultations can be priced as low as $50 without a loss in quality, as online doctors have the same formation as the doctors you visit at the office.

-Consulting a doctor implicates driving a distance, making you lose time and money while teleconsultations can be conducted immediatly and from the comfort and privacy of your home.

-When diagnosing a condition early on, the chances for a fast recovery are higher while avoiding complications. The overall recurring cost, although harder to materialise, from complications and complex diagnosis is reduced and in certain cases, eliminated. In that sense, telemedicine encourages preventive medicine by trying to understand the causes of the medical condition rather than trying to hide its symptomes with drugs; doctor being physically distant from his patient will take the time to circle the problem and propose an indepth solution.

How do you foresee telemedicine and remote consultations in the near future? Do you see yourself as a potential user of such a service? Do you think remote consultations will become mainstream any time soon?

Your TeleDoctor is looking for a service provider to build an alpha version of the service.

Here are the options I found so far:

• Elc Techlnologies that have a Service for Entrepreneurs to provide you with a 1.0 version in as little as 6 weeks. The cost is 90K, all inclusive. Their portfolio is impressive.
• Atlantic Dominion Solution offers to develop around 25 mockups and provide me with one month with one developer for around 32K. Of course, this doesn’t ensure that I will have all the funtionalities implemented. I don’t know how much I should add to this, knowing tht a developer’s rate is $11o an hour.
• InfoEther is a superstars rails shop and have people like Chad Fowler and Rick Kilmer as developers. Their rate is $200 to $225 dollars an hour. This is pretty expensive but can offer consultancy if I choose to work with less skilled developers.
• HashRocket has a program similar to Elc Technologies called 3-2-1 Launch, but the duration is 1 month. They provide you with two developers, rough out an application in 3 days and spend the rest of the month cleaning up and adding features the application according to customer feedback.
• Freelancers. I don’t know what to say about freelancers but from my previous experience, it is very hard to manage someone that will get paid on a hourly basis. I think the best option for someone with limited ressources is to fix the goal. The compagnies that I stated have a proved process and can deliver. One of the problems I ran into for my previous startup is running out of money while paying developers $90 an hour. I spent over $15,000 dollars for maybe one or two functionalities that are not even working properly.

So if you are a rails shop and wants to work towards building an alpha version of teledoctor, please send me an email to mehdi.akiki@gmail.com.