SnapMD recently disclosed that it raised $5.3 million in the first close of a Series A round. The telemedicine startup’s strategy involves arming health systems and accountable care organizations with its technology to support virtual care but as far as COO George Tierney is concerned, the video conferencing component is a relatively small part of what it’s doing..
Product development is one area it has allocated funding, It is developing middleware to support interoperability, particularly for data integration from devices that generate a data feed such as stethoscopes and orthoscopes. It is hoping to roll out a solution late in the second quarter this year.
It has also been working on a scheduling tool for the past several months that would function a bit like Open Table, Tierney said. Although it seems like everyone and their brother has already addressed the challenge of scheduling, Tierney cautioned that it’s not nearly as easy to get it right as it may seem.
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“It is unbelievably complex.because of all of the variables you have to deal with,” he said. “Creating a calendar for one business is totally different from designing something that can work for everyone. It has to be incredibly dynamic and robust, and there are different levels of technical capacity.”
On the subject of video, Tierney said it gets way too much attention — it’s just one component of telemedicine.
“Everyone focuses on video interaction because it’s easy, but it’s more difficult to piece everything together that’s wrapped around it,” he said. “There are way more demands coming from healthcare than secure video. What we have to create are complete workflows that should be the equivalent of stand alone clinics in a virtual environment.”
“From our perspective, the biggest impact telemedicine will have long term will be on patients costing the most and that’s where these technologies will have the greatest impact. That understanding is what informed the development of our business.”
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He said of its customer base, specialists outnumber primary care physicians, but he emphasized that from his perspective it is fairly early and the healthcare community is still trying to figure out how best to roll out this technology. It currently has 23 use cases running on its platform, including second opinions on dental surgery.
Among the specialists it is working with are cardiologists, lactation counselors and endocrinologists. A children’s hospital is using its platform to see if it can do remote check ups for endocrinology patients. Rather than have them endure a long ride to the facility, it wants to see if virtual check ups can offer a decent substitute.
Tierney admits the company has been fortuitous in the changes that it has made. “As far as health IT goes, this is a chess game. It’s not a sprint.”
