A pioneer in telehealth platforms that link the person at home with a doctor is taking on the hospital setting, with a tablet designed to link clinicians at a moment's notice.
American Well's new Telemed Tablet is a "specialized endpoint supporting clinician-to-clinician consults," according to Mary Modahl, chief marketing officer for the Boston-based company. Consisting of a Microsoft Surface Pro tablet and custom-made stand and cart, it supports access points via Apple and Android smartphones and tablets, kiosks and the web.
Its goal is simple: Connect the clinician in the hospital in real-time with other clinicians, such as specialists, nurses and other members of the care team, whether they're in the hospital, another building or even at home. This enables a doctor at the bedside to locate a specialist for an immediate consult, communicate with other departments involved in the patient's care, or check in the with nurse down the hall.
The concept is a departure from the BYOD platform, which envisions clinicians using their own devices to communicate. Modahl said the Telemed Tablet is a designated communications tool, quick and efficient. Doctors won't have to haul out their smartphones, scroll through their personal contacts and apps and try to use the smartphone screen for a video chat with multiple sources.
"The idea is to have a tablet that can always be connected to the available clinician network," she said. "It's all about the immediacy."
With the Telemed Tablet, American Well is expanding its network from the home-based telehealth market to large hospital and health systems and targeting a key pain point – care team coordination. Modahl points out that the tablet is primed for clinician-to-clinician consults at this time, but could eventually be expanded to synch with EMRs, imaging systems and mobile devices, and even bring the patient into the conversation.
"We certainly expect it to evolve," she said.
“The Telemed Tablet opens the door to a completely different paradigm of availability of medical services and the approach for specialty staffing,” Roy Schoenberg, MD, American Well's CEO, said in a prepared release. “This will impact not only the cost of operating a clinical system, but also the quality, scope and timing of care that can be rendered to a patient at any point in time, at the location where they present.”
“Telemedicine is shaping the future of healthcare and how we bring access to patients. The tablet utilizes telehealth by bringing the ability to know when a specialist is available anywhere in our system,” added Peter Rasmussen, MD, director of the Cerebrovascular Center and Medical Director of Distance Health at the Cleveland Clinic, which is piloting the tablet. “We look forward to beginning a pilot in several specialty departments and discover new ways to bring quality care to patients.”
