Telemedicine on the Cheap | Wired | 2.28.05
One evening recently, Kristi Moore was worried that her asthmatic daughter had strep throat, and she wanted a doctor’s opinion. So she grabbed her iSight camera and a flashlight, got her daughter to open her mouth wide and sent live video of her throat over the internet to an on-call doctor she had found online.
After looking at the images, the doctor decided that the young girl was suffering from a harmless postnasal drip, and she only needed some allergy medication.
Moore and her family, who live in Woodstock, Georgia, are pilot participants in a new program from MyMD, an online concierge medical service that offers access to on-call doctors 24 hours a day.
In the past, the company’s doctors had talked with patients over the phone, but now MyMD is giving 1,000 of its top member doctors iBooks and iSight cameras, hoping they will be able to do some of their consulting via video conference.
“I think it made her feel better that she could chat with him in person, rather than over the phone,” said Moore of her daughter’s experience using the MyMD program. “When you have children and have to pack them up in the middle of the night, I wouldn’t have been happy to find out it was just postnasal drip. So it was really fantastic.”
As the traditional model of health care continues to become unwieldy, with some patients enduring long waits to see a doctor for a few minutes, concierge practices are becoming more common. Some doctors are reducing the size of their practices in order to be available, on call, to concierge patients. With minor issues, much of the consulting can be done over the phone. …
“An online doctor is kind of new to a lot of people, and they feel more secure when they can look and see a doctor is talking to them.”
- MyMD Inc., headquartered in Atlanta and founded in 1998, provides a medical service offered over the Internet and telephone to people seeking medical advice and assistance. MyMD physicians, who are all board certified in their specialties, bring their expertise to help patients in need of care.
- Unlike many other groups, MyMD is a direct real time interaction between specialists in primary/specialty care and patients. This is very similar to medicine practiced every day where physicians respond to patient’s needs by telephone, evaluate their requests and information and then take appropriate actions to improve the patient’s health.
- A physician who provides premium services for an additional fee. These include, 24/7 physician access, same/next day appointments, and Email/Fax access.
- Medical Advice
- eConsult Housecall
- Products
Telemedicine, telepresence, concierge medicine, and medicine by waldo—I’m getting an entire legal education online, why not practice medicine online—just a moment, I’m diagnosing a hemorrhoid in Montana…