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Realising the promise of true telemedicine
I am probably starting to sound a little repetitive here, but we made a commitment to universal access to health in 1948 and we’ve had telemedicine to help bridge some critical access gaps since at least 1964, yet we’re still not there. It would be a gross misrepresentation to say that we’ve not made a lot of progress since, especially in the past two years — I only wish it was voluntary progress.
Unsurprisingly, this progress has been correlated with the simplicity of data collection and decision making, and I thought it might be helpful to summarise it in context of our latest investments.
The basics: telemedicine began with primary care consultations and decisions that doctors could assess with their own eyes and ears (albeit filtered across the increasingly high quality cameras and microphones). A lot can actually be done here, and patients have indeed benefited, but it is certainly not as comprehensive as in-person visits. Clearly, this had to be enhanced — not only in what can be obtained from the sound and video, but also what else can be collected. Amazingly enough, in the year 2021, even these basics are not available everywhere in the world just yet, despite high mobile and internet penetration.
We recently met one company in Colombia that was truly trailblazing in its approach to integrated telemedicine in…
