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The Skype solution

Many patients would balk at the notion of going to the doctor — on their computer.

And many family doctors are skeptical that medicine by Skype is effective or can even result in a complete diagnosis of a patient’s condition.

Yet logging in and having an online video chat with a doctor is becoming ever more common in the United States. Insurance companies are starting to pay doctors for such online consultations. BCC Research, a market research firm based in Wellesley, Massachusetts, earlier this year predicted that the telehome medicine market, which includes all medical products and services provided in patients’ homes via teletechnologies, will increase from US$2.9 billion in 2010 to US$7.9 billion in 2015.

That doesn’t surprise Dr. Jay Sanders, the so-called “father of telemedicine,” president and CEO of the Global Telemedicine Group and adjunct professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland. “Patients don’t have to leave work and they save in transportation costs. Those costs alone make [booking an online appointment] worth it,” he says.

Such savings, and convenience, appear to be the primary appeals of video chat medicine.

Patients can log in 24/7 and usually get access to a doctor within 10 minutes, says Randy Parker, CEO of the MDLiveCare, an interactive medical consultation firm that says it has connected more than 250 000 Americans to a doctor in their home state (as required by regulation).

As a consequence, patients are more likely to seek medical treatment before their conditions necessitate visits to emergency departments, “which is much more expensive,” adds Parker, who notes that video chat medicine has gained legitimacy to the point where several major American medical insurers now fully or partially cover a select number of online consultations annually.

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