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

Email communication with patients should be as safe as possible. Using a personal mail account may not be the best way to send clinical content to your doctor. It’s pretty recomendable to use encrypted and HIPPA compliant email services.

HouseDoc is one of them. Could be interesting to get a list of all the different email services available nowadays. I’ll try to collect and post them here.

One year ago, I met Yonah Yaphe, an israelite GP, on the 25th Encontro Nacional de Clinica Geral (an annual national meeting of GPs that occurs on sunny Vilamoura, in Algarve – Portugal). At that time, I was really glad to meet him, since he has become a very experienced eCounselor. eCounselling has been a significant part of his daily work has a GP, since 4 years.

eCounselling should definitely be a part of the GP Curriculum, since we already are in need to know the techniques and difficulties that electronic counselling encompasses.

I asked Yonah Yaphe to allow me to post here one of his presentations, that was available on the First Virtual Congress of GP/FM.

I hope you enjoy it as much has I did. He is the first virtual GP I’ve met.