Silicon Valley startup Pokitdok rolled out an Enterprise Scheduler, enabling a wide range of providers — group practices, hospitals and telehealth — to centralize scheduling and move away from clunky call centers and switchboard operations.
The San Mateo-based company said most providers lack an electronic calendaring program “that captures availability of every physician in the network,” leading to less-than-efficient use of time and potentially missing out on revenues.
It’s one of several health IT startups working in the scheduling space, a perhaps mundane but important piece of the puzzle for providers. Others include Smart Scheduling, HealthPost and RelateCare, among scores of others.
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The scheduler harnesses web and mobile apps to make matters more efficient, in turn driving costs down, the company said.
Specifically, the emerging telehealth providers — expected to reach $1.9 billion by 2018 — aren’t well-suited to use conventional software, the company said, adding that it’s new scheduler doesn’t require any software instillation or IT overhead.
The PokitDok Enterprise Scheduler API performs schedule aggregation to third party scheduling applications, including commercial off-the-shelf practice management software and supports practices with their own home-grown solution.
With the new scheduler, consumers can book doctor visits for themselves or a dependent. Location, timing and physician preferences can be set and rescheduling can be done online using a desktop or mobile device. It would also enable email and text reminders to be pushed to iOS and Android platforms.
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PokitDok’s API uses JavaScript Object Notation for requests and responses. All API traffic is encrypted over HTTPS and authentication is handled with OAuth2, the open standard for authentication and authorization.
PokitDok, founded in 2011, has also developed an API for price transparency. It’s CEO is Lisa Maki. and CTO is Ted Tanner.
