Health IT, Startups

Startup TreatMD sets sights on global telemedicine

Co-founder Brian Lenette likened TreatMD to a cross between real estate platform Zillow and telemedicine.

global medicine

For at least the second time this week, a smallish telemedicine firm is thinking big. TreatMD, a two-year-old, Miami-based startup, wants to be a global company by serving as a platform for any doctor anywhere to offer telemedicine services.

The site launched in beta two months ago. TreatMD said Wednesday that it is in 22 countries so far and that its platform hosts communications in at least 30 languages. “We market to dozens of countries every day,” co-founder Bryan Lenett said.

“We started TreatMD with a mindset of mixing Zillow and telemedicine,” Lenett explained. Zillow is best known as a database for real estate valuations, but it also hosts a marketplace for connecting property buyers and sellers with related services, including agents, mortgage lenders and remodelers.

Similarly, TreatMD connects patients with physicians, but, unlike many other “on-demand” telemedicine companies, lets physicians set the terms. “You charge what you feel your rate is,” Lenett said. “It’s an open platform for everybody.”

And he means everybody, as in, worldwide. “Why can’t a patient in Florida suffering from an illness or disease like cancer search [for] and communicate with a doctor in Germany, or any country for new treatments or even second opinions?” Lenett wondered.

At this point, U.S. patients can’t easily get remote diagnoses and treatment from a doctor in another state due to laws that usually require a physician to be licensed in the state where the patient is physically located. But Lenett is not aware of any U.S. laws preventing overseas physicians from seeing American patients online.

“From our understanding, it doesn’t seem like there is any qualm,” he said. Patients obviously can’t fill prescriptions in this country written by physicians without licensure from a U.S. state, but, to Lenett, an online consultation is rather similar to medical tourism. “People are flying back and forth [for treatment] every day,” he noted.

Lenett believes his company’s model is unique in the industry.

HealthTap calls itself the “world’s first global health practice,” but that company is more about crowdsourcing answers to medical questions — though it does offer telemedicine services — than a straight telemedicine provider. Plus, HealthTap, not the participating physician, sets the price, Lenett noted.

Lenette said to expect more news soon about integrations with electronic health records vendors. Some of the integrations are complete, he said, but TreatMD is not ready to announce those partnerships yet.

Photo: Bigstock

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