By Robert Groth
October 6th and 7th was the 2009 Health 2.0 “User-generated” Healthcare conference in San Francisco, CA spent a great deal of time discussing the emergence of clinical groupware and the next generation of online clinician-patient interaction tools. There was lively debate on whether these technologies were ready to be adopted, whether our healthcare system would make a way to pay for the solutions, and whether doctors would use clinical groupware. A three doctor panel following demos of the five clinical groupware web applications were skeptical of wide spread use.
On day one of the conference five senior executives from emerging clinical groupware companies spoke about and demonstrated their own technologies. The speakers included Paul Abramson of Health, Roy Schoenberg, the CEO of American Well, Martin Pellinate, the CEO of VisionTree Software, Steve Adams, CEO of RMD Networks, and Arien Malec, the VP of Product Management for Relay Health.
- Roy Schoenberg, the CEO of American Well at Health 2.0 2009 in San Francisco
All of the clinical groupware web applications demonstrated had a platform for patient-physician communication. They had features like online appointment scheduling, automated data-entry of important information about a patient’s condition for the physician to better understand an ailment, online help for a patient to better understand their condition, retrieval and online storing of patient lab information, and documentation of the interactions between patient and physician. Some of the applications showed features like mobile phone access, two-way video conferencing, and the creation of coordinated carte plans. While it is easy to see why patients would be excited about these technologies, the questions of the day came back to:
Who pays for these clinical groupware applications?
How do you get the physicians to adopt the technology?
The Moderator of the discussion, David Kibbe, Senior Advisor for AAFP, started the conversation by indicating that the rise of clinical groupware would require changes in how our healthcare system works. He commented, “We have not see the large changes in payment structures that would allow for adoption by healthcare providers of online and remote telehealth solutions that the clinical groupware providers offer.” One big stumbling block to adoption of clinical groupware is the lack of Medicare reimbursement for remote patient-physician interactions.
All five vendors of demonstrated their web portals for patient-physician interaction. Most notable were:
Martin Pellinate from VisionTree discussed a mobile component of their application for patients to have mobile access to medical information.
Roy Schoenberg from American Well demonstrated an online payment system that physicians can share for remote telehealth visits that is already in production in the state of Hawaii. American Well also demonstrated two-way video conferencing.
• Steve Adams at RMD Networks focused on the creation of coordinated care plans for patients.
In day two of the conference Dr. Roni Zeiger from Google Health also presented a clinical groupware application in collaboration with a partner MDLiveCare, which was just integrated with Google Health and launched. This application also showed similar features to the other applications and the ability to offer two-way video conferencing for patients and physicians.
After the five vendor clinical groupware panel on day one of the Health 2.0 conference, a second panel of physicians discussed Adoption of Health 2.0 platforms by Physicians on Main Street‚Äù. We will go into their comments in part 2 of this article, but, all three physicians poured cold water on the new technology. Amy Berlin, a practicing psychiatrist remarks, “There is no technology that can replace interaction between two people and there is nothing that can replace physician to physician discussion.” She remarks that we should “reconsider the premise that more information will change patient behavior.”