A Call for Virtual Doctors
The recently published “Virtual Doctor Visit Report”, conducted by Prophis eResearch on 1600 online US adults, proves that patients perceive online consultation as being positive, and even more if one is consultated by a personally known physician.
How should GP practices prepare themselves for this upcoming reality? Should Instant Messaging services and virtual reality consultations be as common as a telephone consultation?
In my humble opinion, yes they should.
The “Virtual Doctor Visit Report” results – via imarketinsights
Further information:
- Scienceroll: Call Your Doctor Online: The Future of Medicine
- Innovation Playground: The Coming Healthcare Innovation – Doctors Need to Go Virtual… and Social
- Prophis eResearch: Virtual Doctor Visit Report – Perceptions, Projected Use and Users of Internet-based Doctor-Patient Interaction
alexandregouveia are discussing. 
Anne Marie Cunningham 20:45 on 22/02/2009 Permalink |
Hi,
Interesting. Do you have a link to the US report? What is the situation in Portugal with regards to conultations which are not face to face, eg telephone and beyond?
Thanks
Anne Marie
alexandregouveia 20:58 on 22/02/2009 Permalink |
Hi, Anne Marie
Unfortunately I don’t have the US report, and I think it’s not available online.
In Portugal we don’t have solid data regarding the telephone consultations (they were never object of adequate research) but I’m pretty sure they represent around 10% of a daily GP work (email consultations are still residual).
There is a group of colleagues from the Portuguese Association of GPs that are starting a research project on this subject. As soon as the data is available, I will let you know.
Many thanks,
Alex.
Anne Marie Cunningham 21:33 on 22/02/2009 Permalink |
http://www.imarketinsights.com/modules/mastop_publish/?tac=Patients_praise_and_pan_virtual_doctor_visit
Actually this shows that minority were positive (48%) with majority being negative or neutral. The headline admits ‘mixed’ reception.
Also interesting is that those accepting virtual consultations, are more tolerant of this being with a doctor they do not know. In my experience these are generally well, young patients. We have to make sure that we don’t start designing health services around this demographic. Some would say that this has started happening in England.
Thanks
AM