Telehealth Rising to the occasion!

Telehealth has been one such opportunity where stars are finally shining

Looking at all crisis situations of past one obvious thing which comes out is that it always leads to new opportunities.

Telehealth has been one such opportunity where stars are finally shining and the companies who have been upskilling and improving their technology and ability to deliver are smiling.

We should be proud that Telehealth industry has been smartly building their ability and ready to deliver at the time of need.

In last few weeks we have seen volumes going up in all types of consults. We go through the resource crunch during the pandemic and tele-health smartly provides the much-needed service elasticity to our health care system.

It literally comes from behind and provides the same kind of relief like building a new hospital and additional infrastructure. The increase in tele-health volume has been up to 300% within the first weeks of outbreak.

Many companies have mobilized express onboarding teams to get new adaptors in tune with the technology and usage.

Not only it is reducing the chances of infection, but people have suddenly realized the benefit of no wait times. Talking to a customer last week I realized that they see tele-health providing the best of both worlds both in terms of cost and convenience.

Needless to add that health systems have successfully scaled up their tele-health operations to complement the capacity constraints hospitals faced in first few weeks.

The good part has been that the volume in tele-health been on rise in last few years but with slower than the scaled capacity. That gave the extra buffer which was needed.

We may be seeing a tipping point that takes tele-health mainstream in one stroke, transforming the way we experience digital health care in the future.

The biggest advantage would be that everyone will get used to tele-health visits as an acceptable way of obtaining health care for less urgent needs. Companies which are delivering second opinion in combination of primary care consult are even better placed to optimize care and take service levels to totally new level.

Remote patient monitoring (RPM) and home monitoring has also grown steadily in the past couple of years, the current lockdown restrictions across the country have highlighted the need to monitor patients with chronic conditions in their homes.

Patients suspecting Covid 19 have also benefited in these difficult times where stress and anxiety has been at its peak.

Telehealth and remote health care are finally here to stay and deliver.