Providing market intelligence for more than 35 years

What should executives keep in mind as they consider the expanding acceptance of and preference for virtual care delivery among consumers and payers? There are three big considerations that are outlined in Virtual Care Demand Could Test Care Providers’ Health IT Infrastructure In 2015, a piece by Harry Wang, the lead analyst for Parks Associates’ digital health research program, that appeared recently in Computerworld.

  1. The video revolution has its challenges – While traditional patient portals are probably fine, according to Mr. Wang, interactive communications services using video could be a potential area for trouble. The issues to consider include video player configurations and related software challenges, system capabilities and reliability for increased video traffic, and security.
  2. Real-time health information exchange is the expectation – Virtual care increases timely access to professionals, and consumers expect their medical records to keep up. Increasing use of telehealth will highlight the problems of interoperability (see Net Neutrality Is About More Than Streaming Movies and Interoperable Electronic Data Exchange Is Non-Existent Among Long-Term Care Provider Organizations). Consumers expect timely access to past health records, lab tests, and diagnostic imaging.
  3. Dealing with all that remote monitoring data – The most advanced of virtual care systems leverage consumer self-monitoring capabilities, and integrated them into virtual care sessions. It sounds quite simple, but how such data will be fed into electronic health records (EHR) without delay and then compared with similar historical data is no simple matter. And, it is critically important to both the consumer experience and realizing cost savings from e-health.

From the article "The Uphill Climb To Virtual Care" by Monica E. Oss.

Previously In The News

Report: U.S. Households Will Buy More Than 10 Million Smart Home Controllers in 2021

Parks Associates announced new smart home research today showing 26% of smart homeowners purchased their devices from brick-and-mortar retail stores such as Best Buy, Home Depot, or Walmart, making th...

Weekly Music Publishing Update 2.17.17: Chance The Rapper, Amazon, Anghami, Streaming Partnership & More

According to a report published by Parks Associates, there is a dark horse in the streaming market: Amazon Prime Music. The company's senior analyst says, "Nearly one-half of streaming music subscribe...

Euro SVOD Lags The US

New research from Parks Associates shows that in the UK, 55% of broadband homes watch OTT video. In France, the total is 51%. The levels of OTT usage lag that of the US, where 70% of broadband home...

Cutting the cord: 59% of Americans have canceled cable TV, signaling the dominance of streaming giants Netflix, Hulu and Amazon

Netflix is also preparing to crackdown on illegal account sharing via new artificial intelligence software, which will be able to analyze which users are logged in and then flag shared accounts. Th...