Health IT, Hospitals

Intel doc on telemedicine: Time has come for this “illegal” and profit-free business model

It was an interesting and educational on-call shift for Dr. Mark Blatt one holiday weekend […]

It was an interesting and educational on-call shift for Dr. Mark Blatt one holiday weekend in the mid-1990s. The family doctor in Enfield, Conn. was covering for his 12 colleagues.

After making rounds at the hospital Blatt, now the Worldwide Medical Director, Enterprise Solution Sales at Intel, started receiving patient calls – several hundred, in fact – over the duration of the weekend. Blatt was able to triage and treat 70 percent of the patients over the phone.

“I began to wonder: what am I doing in the office on Monday?” he said at a session during CONVERGE today in Philadelphia.

Blatt realized he had treated far more patients than he was typically able to.
“It was convenient for the patient, it was free and it might have also been illegal,” Blatt said as the audience laughed.
It was this experience that actually made him wonder how he might deliver healthcare less expensively – “for 10 cents on every dollar.”

Could he cut the cost of a routine office visit by reducing the need for the patient to come to the office? Would that allow him to free up some time to treat the patients he really needed to see in person?

Blatt wondered: At what point did citizens begin needing their doctor for everything? With decision support tools available in one’s pocket whenever and wherever it is needed, “Why couldn’t I provide care there rather than in the office?”

Recent studies by Kaiser and the Veterans Administration on the use of electronic medical records show that incentivizing providers increased their use of technology. “Clinicians are looking at technology to deliver real-time collaboration with their colleagues,” he said, which in turn requires HIT infrastructures that use incorporate big data, cloud computing, tablets, smartphones, and devices like Google Glass.

“Where the power of computing really exists is if I can have a positive impact on a diabetic patient,” Blatt said, for example in knowing which restaurant the patient entered, and whether anything on its menu might negatively impact the patient. “This is where technology, what I call edge analytics, can be most beneficial and where building other networks might not be necessary.”

Edge of network technology is not just about data.

“I would be able to see your electrolyte levels, your lab values, but often the studies aren’t able to see all of the data important to the patient,” Blatt said.

That is where new technologies have the potential to benefit the patient most.

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