Taking a page out of many insurers’ books, the much buzzed-about diagnostics company Theranos is launching a new web portal to connect patients with primary care doctors.
“Theranos MD Connect” is meant to improve preventative care, the company said in a release – and, undoubtedly, it’s to help grow the company’s reputation among front line health practitioners. It’ll launch July 3 on Theranos.com.
Multiple health systems and insurers, of course, are already taking a similar approach to improve the interface between doctors and patients – take Kaiser’s My Health Manager – so it’ll be interesting to see if Theranos can bring anything new, if at all, to the table.
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Theranos’ approach is to provide “more accessible, less expensive, and less painful diagnostic tests is to enable individuals and physicians to better engage early when interventions can be most effective,” CEO Elizabeth Holmes said in a statement. Meaning, it’ll feed the data from Theranos’ diagnostics to an appropriate primary care practitioner, who can interpret test results and move on from there.
The new Theranos site will go into effect in Arizona, since there are several Theranos Wellness Centers in the state. Patients can track their data through Theranos’ app.
Here are four similar services already being used to help doctors and patients interface – and ultimately focus more keenly on preventative care:
CVS myHealthFinder
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Theranos’ Walgreens connection is helping enable its patient-physician portal. But CVS has something similar built into its services – integrating the federal government’s HealthFinder.gov into an API program called myHealthFinder. Again, the mission here is preventative care.
HealthFinder.gov provides consumers with information on health screenings and preventative care, as well as ACA benefits information and a provider directory. CVS’ myHealthFinder API is meant to allow
NextMD
Simply one example of a patient-facing portal that’s typical of many offered by health providers. It helps patients reach out directly to doctors, manage medication doses, schedule appointments and view their personal health record.
Aetna iTriage
Aetna’s consumer-facing iTriage division is meant to increase patient engagement – allowing users to seek out medical answers, connect with doctors and securely maintain health information. It’s also meant to link up health plans by guiding members toward cost-effective, in-network care, and feeds that infromation to employers so they can wind up with lower bottom lines.
Apple HealthKit
There are a number of apps designed to help patients and doctors interface. These will likely become more robust as Apple begins to integrate more fully with EHRs, hospitals and health plans – letting doctors access patient information remotely, and letting patients relay their concerns to doctors electronically.
