With the proliferation of high-resolution and color-accurate smartphone cameras and highbandwidth internet connections, app-based telemedicine solutions have had the foundational pieces to be technically feasible for a number of years now. However, although medical operators who have previously implemented these solutions are already cognizant of their benefits, in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic, these solutions are more urgently required by both medical operators and patients than ever below. Here’s why we at Vinfotech believe you should strongly consider implementing our secure HIPPA compliant telemedicine platform in your own medical practice.

As a medical provider, there are various advantages to implementing a telemedicine solution that gives you the ability to conduct telehealth consultations. Enabling virtual consultations lowers the load on your medical staff, waiting room infrastructure, and makes healthcare (especially from specialists who concentrate in larger markets) more accessible to those who live in smaller cities and rural areas. Additionally, not requiring patients to physically visit the clinic and put up with long lines when unnecessary improves their experience and makes you likelier to retain their business over the long-term. It cuts costs and improve productivity at once, helping you improve the baseline economics of your business.

However, even though we believe these benefits are reason enough to implement a telemedicine solution under normal times, these are not normal times. Because of the high-risk of transmission at facilities treating Covid-19 patients, people have been advised not to visit healthcare facilities unless absolutely urgent for the foreseeable future. This trend has been further exacerbated by the worldwide shelter-in-place orders but we anticipate it to continue even as restrictions are lifted in the coming weeks and months. Even in cases where patients deem it essential to see a doctor, we are seeing a dramatically increased burden to service each patient. Doctors are having to rely heavily on scarce PPE, and visiting rooms require deep sanitation between patients, reducing throughput. As a medical practitioner, you are well aware that these factors are cumulatively resulting in record closures of hospitals and other medical operators, even at a time when healthcare is at the top of everyone’s mind more than ever before.

In this context, the decision to formulate and implement a telemedicine strategy is existential. Fortunately, in addition to being essential, implementing a telemedicine platform also represents a huge opportunity. In addition to helping you better retain your existing roster of patients as well as reach new ones in geographies heretofore unserviceable, the reduced operational and staffing load of servicing each patient enables you to improve the efficiency and margin structure of your business in the long term.

Additionally, the Covid-19 pandemic mitigates the largest pain-point in the successful deployment of a telemedicine solution, conservative consumer attitudes resistant to change. In a scenario where the only way to receive (or provide) medical care is to do so virtually, patients are much likelier to put aside their preconceived notions about its effectiveness and give it a shot. We believe patients will continue to appreciate the ease of virtually consulting their doctor from the comfort of their own homes long after the passing of the Covid-19 pandemic, in the same way many consumers first purchased a book on Amazon due to lack of local availability, but now prefer to buy everything online because of added connivence.

According to a study (Rajesh Acharya and Jasuma,2016) conducted to evaluate the effects telemedicine on patients and medical specialists, and doctor perception towards telemedicine in India, where about 80% patients reported their satisfaction towards the treatment, 90% of the participants found telemedicine cost-effective whereas 61% of the doctors found an increase in patient’s inflow when compared to their regular practice.

If you believe your practice could benefit from adopting a telemedicine strategy, please reach out so that someone from Vinfotech can give you a personalized demo of our affordable, HIPPAcompliant, white label, custom telemedicine platform that can be implemented in a manner of days.