Patients are increasingly demanding telemedicine services and providers are making moves to meet those demands. A June report from Tractica projects there will be 158.4 million telehealth video consultations by 2020, a 700 percent increase from the 19.7 million consultations in 2014.
In light of this growth, the ONC released a whitepaper outlining nine key principles for a consumer-centered telehealth experience.
1. Telehealth solutions must be easy for patients to use. The interface and usability of telemedicine applications should offer patients a seamless and efficient interaction that uses as little mindshare of the consumer as possible.
2. Incorporate smart triggers into team-based care. Smart triggers are points that prompt a user to perform behaviors on behalf of the patient. By encouraging users on the provider side of telemedicine to assist patients in this way, it keeps the patient up to date and in the know of what is happening from their multifaceted care team.
3. The real world and online world must overlap. With mobile devices becoming more entwined with everyday life, the digital and real world must come together. "The next generation of telehealth solutions would be consumer-centered by perfecting this balance. It would be used to help people connect to their real world healthcare providers for conveniently and continuously using technology, rather than creating alternate and disjointed care episodes with virtual providers who do not have an integration point into the person's real world," reads the whitepaper.
4. Be careful of data overload. With so many wearables and digital health devices out there, providers should be sensitive to overwhelming patients with high volumes of data. The whitepaper suggests consumer-centered telehealth solutions will be able to mine through data and utilize preference-sensitive alerts to reduce user fatigue.
5. Consumers should be central in their healthcare data. The patient's role in their healthcare management is becoming more prevalent, and providing them access to their data so they can manage and make decisions will grow in importance.
6. Data from various sources should converge. Too often, healthcare data is fragmented, according to the whitepaper, so consumer-centric designs should allow for data produced during telehealth interactions to be integrated with a patient's core electronic medical record. "Without this convergence, these telehealth-based interactions run the risk of creating opportunities to further fragment care and create new data silos."
7. Care should be based on more than just clinical information. Contextual information is important for holistic care, such as psychological and emotional data. Integrating alerts based on these data points can help patients become more engaged in their care and work with non-clinical members of their care teams, suggests the whitepaper.
8. Human interaction should tie into the technology. Care should not become solely technologically based; rather, the technology should help improve, support and foster human interaction.
9. Increase focus on safeguard patient data. Security of patient data is a priority for all healthcare providers, and telehealth platforms are no exception. As new telehealth models emerge, they require a renewed focus on security standards.
More articles on telemedicine:
Chiron Health partners with athenahealth's 'More Disruption Please' for telemedicine offerings
HIMSS analysis finds telemedicine adoption is rising
The innovation paradox: Those who most need it can't get it