At a time when the COVID-19 pandemic has severely restricted patients’ ability to see their doctors, telemedicine has taken to the frontline of the hard-hit healthcare industry. Telemedicine is expanding access to essential health services amid increasing social distancing facilitate public health mitigation strategies during this pandemic. These services can be a safer option for healthcare providers and patients by reducing potential infectious exposures. Besides, continued care through telemedicine can avoid additional negative consequences from delayed preventive, chronic, or routine care. And many of these dynamics are likely to be in place for at least the next 12 to 18 months, as concerns about COVID-19 remain until a surefire vaccine is discovered. During this period, patients’ preferences for care access will continue to evolve, and telemedicine could become more deeply embedded in the care delivery system.
However, to ultimately realize such an ambitious dream, the healthcare sector first needs to mitigate many of the pervasive issues of the present day. The primary concerns about telehealth include security, workflow integration, effectiveness compared with in-person visits, and the terms of reimbursement. Similarly, there is a gap between consumers’ interest in telehealth (76 percent) and actual usage (46 percent). Factors such as lack of awareness of telehealth offerings, education on types of care needs that could be met virtually, and understanding of insurance coverage are some of the drivers of this gap. Therefore, incorporating telemedicine with present healthcare will require new ways of working for a broad set of providers, step-change improvements in information exchange, and broadening access and integration of technology.
At this juncture, telemedicine consulting/service providers with advanced and integrated offerings are on the rise. To help healthcare providers strengthen their operational capabilities and simultaneously enable growth in the sector, Healthcare Tech Outlook has compiled a list of the top 10 most promising telemedicine consulting/services companies. The list comprises prominent organizations in the industry that solve challenges in the telemedicine arena by implementing the current trends. Besides, the magazine also includes insights from thought leaders in the sector on the industry trends, best practices, recent innovations, and their advice for the aspiring CIOs & CXOs.
We present to you Healthcare Tech Outlook’s, “Top 10 Telemedicine Consulting/Service Companies - 2020.”