Man told he’s going to die by doctor on video-link robot

mHealth Insights

This is a terrible news story for those keen to see the modernisation of how healthcare is  delivered particularly as Kaiser was the world’s first major Healthcare brand to go Mobile First (back in 2012).

It is obvious that the big opportunity for Patients and Carers is in enabling them to connect with their family Doctors for the complex day to day  management of their health needs but this is ignores the fact that most money (and profits) lie in the Hospital side of the US healthcare industry so naturally this is where the sick care industry will invest in video tech because it will return the most revenue for the investment by enabling organisations like Kaiser to introduce services that are more profitable (or ‘cost saving’ in light of them being a not for profit organisation).

I suppose it’s a bit like the saying “when all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail” but when applied to healthcare organisations “when you make all your money when Patients are in hospital beds any crackpot idea is a good one as long as they stay in the bed”.  The are loads of examples of these daft tech concepts in broken healthcare systems eg. Boston Children’s hospital was sending Patients home with 2 wheeled robots, the EU was wasting money on R&D into homecare future scenarios that ignored the fact that everyone already has a mobile, the NHS paid to have an app built so that bereaved children could compose music, etc.

Check out this post for some good tips on online consulting.

You might also find the talk I gave.at Doctors 2.0 in 2014 on video consulting best practice interesting: