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In the early stages of the pandemic, when lockdown meant that many patients were wary of visiting doctor\u2019s surgeries in person, the use of digital healthcare services rocketed.\u202f <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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The curious thing, though, is that this technology wasn\u2019t new. It was entirely possible, pre-pandemic, to organise a teleconsultation, but at AXA, we found that, of those who registered for the Virtual Doctor service, 26% went on to use it. After the pandemic hit, that figure leapt to 64%, as the service was used in 65 more countries, totalling 141 by December 2021.\u202f\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Initially, during the first few months of the pandemic, the use of telehealth grew by a faster rate than it has done in recent months. Now, it sits at around two to three times the previous levels and if we want to maintain these levels and the benefits offered by telehealth, we need to take action. As terrible as the pandemic has been, it posed an opportunity that comes once in a century to make fundamental changes to the way we do things. So, the question now is: what does the future of telehealth look like and how will customers choose between virtual and face-to-face care?\u202f\u202f\u202f\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Why wasn\u2019t it used initially?\u202f<\/strong>\u202f <\/p>\n\n\n\n Historically, what we\u2019ve seen is that patients would typically turn to telehealth as a plan-B. For instance, when they had a problem but couldn\u2019t get in to see their doctor. But if they found that the problem couldn\u2019t be solved via teleconsultation, or if the advice was ultimately to visit their doctor for an in-person inspection, they were unlikely to use the service again.\u202f\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n In order to get the most value out of telehealth, providers and insurers need to understand \u2013 and demonstrate \u2013 that it\u2019s a means to an end, as opposed to an end in its own right. The problem we\u2019ve traditionally had is that many patients seem not to accept a teleconsultation as a step in a wider process, despite the fact that after their consultation, around 55% of users are in a position where they can administer self-care from home. Changing this mindset and raising awareness of the true value of telehealth will be an important step in maintaining its popularity.\u202f\u202f\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n A phygital approach is required<\/strong>\u202f <\/p>\n\n\n\n For telehealth to be successful in the long term, a \u2018phygital\u2019 approach \u2013 a mixture of physical and digital \u2013 is required. Consider cancer detection. We know that skin cancer can be detected very well digitally, but you can\u2019t receive all of the required treatment digitally. So, a seamless flow between the physical and digital worlds is the key to making telehealth successful. We need to do whatever\u2019s needed, delivering the right care at the right time, without getting hung up on whether it\u2019s physical or digital.\u202f\u202f\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Digital health, supported by telehealth, needs to become less fragmented<\/strong>\u202f <\/p>\n\n\n\n Imagine a patient who has recently had surgery for a knee injury. Their insurer has paid their claim, but when the patient calls for a follow-up tele-consultation, the doctor they speak with doesn\u2019t know in advance that they\u2019ve had surgery. Meanwhile, their well-being app still tells them to walk 10,000 steps per day.\u202f\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n So far, digital health has operated in a silo. Right now, this fragmentation is being managed by the consumers themselves; they are the ones dealing with the complexity. But a digital native is used to advanced levels of personalisation. When they need to make a seemingly everyday transaction, such as buying groceries or calling a taxi, the outlets they\u2019ve used before will often remember who they are and what they\u2019ve ordered previously. So, when they come to healthcare, it\u2019s off-putting to find that a provider they\u2019ve been with 10 years doesn\u2019t know half as much about them.\u202f\u202f\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is why there has been a lack of trust in telehealth \u2013 it looks to the customer as though their provider doesn\u2019t even know them. So, providers need to offer a more connected experience.\u202f\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n The industry understands the potential of telehealth \u2013 and that potential is huge. There\u2019s a lot of good work being done in silo, but for patients to accept digital as a viable way to take care of their health, we need those different parts to come together, and form a single, flowing user journey. From the smartwatch on their wrist and the well-being app on their phone, to the video consultation they\u2019ll have with their doctor and the appointment they\u2019ll ultimately attend with a specialist \u2013 if we can find ways of making this a seamless and personalised journey, that the patients themselves aren\u2019t required to manage, we\u2019ll be on our way to making a success of telehealth.\u202f\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n We have all the parts. We know what needs to be done, and we have a unique opportunity, as we come out of the pandemic, to bring all of those moving parts together. The question now is, will we?\u202f\u202f\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Telehealth presents a unique opportunity for the healthcare industry \u2013 the potential is huge, yet it\u2019s still not being fully utilised. Here, Somesh Chandra, Chief Health Officer \u2013 Europe & Latin America and Business Head \u2013 Digital Health, AXA Group, explores if telehealth is here to stay.\u00a0\u00a0 In the early stages of the pandemic, when […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":75395,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6587,1489,17535,93],"tags":[17652,8,15899,17653,9369],"class_list":["post-75393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-analysis","category-insights","category-latam","category-top-stories","tag-axa-group","tag-europe","tag-latin-america","tag-somesh-chandra","tag-telehealth"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/48"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75393"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75393\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":75397,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75393\/revisions\/75397"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}