Online consultations need careful consideration, says RCGP
mHealth Insights
Despite the visionary papers and video consulting skills workshops the RCGP has been left behind by the most senior members of society and the youngest. It’s time they got up to speed with the opportunity that we have today when most of the Patients and Carers that GPs care for now carry an always connected supercomputers and they can be used to enable productive relationships and there’s an abundance of proof that they can not just alleviate but completely side step workload pressures.
The RCGP should urgently be asking WTF!? because GPs need to move beyond the office only visit model, are ideally placed to innovate with the tools of our time and protect Patients from the multitude of corporations that are undermining the value of a consult with a Doctor by turning Patients and their Data into a traded product and the government’s half baked ‘Artificial Intelligence’ concepts that will replace Doctors with telephone answering robots.
Instead of ignoring the best practice (eg. Dr John Bachman MD, Prof of Primary Care at the Mayo Clinic (2012) or David Doherty, cofounder of 3G Doctor (2014)) in 2018 the RCGP should be making history and becoming the first Royal College to expect a smartphone to be used in membership exams (instead of automatically failing anyone found to be in possession of one) and to begin testing Clinicians on their ability to use the Internet WITH Patients.
