Rx trends 2015: Telehealth poised for takeoff

Doctors making house calls? It sounds so ... 19th century, conjuring up images of a tweedy medical practitioner arriving on someone’s doorstep by horse and buggy with a medical bag and a stethoscope.



A company called Pager is working to bring the house call into the 21st century, beginning in New York City. Co-founded by Oscar Salazar, who helped launch Uber, Pager offers an iPhone app that allows users to line up an urgent-care home visit in two hours or less, from a board-certified physician, with fees starting at $199.



Pager joins the fast-expanding field of telehealth, which the American Telemedicine Association describes as “the use of medical information exchanged from one site to another via electronic communications to improve a patient’s clinical health status ... using two-way video, email, smartphones” and other wireless tools.



Such drug chains as Thrifty White have been providing remote-site dispensing and video-enabled pharmacist counseling in geographically dispersed communities for years. And CVS, Walgreens and Rite Aid have all launched telehealth initiatives in some markets. But its adoption is accelerating fast, said Roeen Roashan, medical devices and digital health analyst at IHS Technology. She predicted a 10-fold rise in the telehealth market by 2018, and credited “rising expenses, an aging population and the increasing prevalence of chronic diseases,” along with the shortage of primary care physicians and the need to expand access to care. Among examples:

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  CVS, Walgreens, Cardinal Health and other companies launched the Alliance for Connected Care to foster adoption of tele-health through legislation. In December, Walgreens also partnered with MDLIVE to launch a telehealth offering that links patients in California and Michigan to physicians through its website;


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  The Mayo Clinic launched a telehealth pilot to provide telehealth services to middle-school students and school staff in Austin, Texas;


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  The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services recently indicated it was considering covering telehealth services through Medicare; and


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  Bills that would encourage adoption have been introduced in Congress, including the Accountable Care Organization Improvement Act and the Telehealth Enhancement Act.