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Yulun Wang, Ph.D., Chairman & CEO of InTouch Health and President-Elect of the American Telemedicine Association

By Yulun Wang, Ph.D., Chairman & CEO of InTouch Health

The need to provide high quality healthcare to everyone, while reducing costs, has reached a crisis level where it is a major focus at the highest government level.   More and more politicians and healthcare leaders are realizing that telemedicine is clearly a cornerstone of the solution.  This is tangibly seen by the increasing number of healthcare systems that are adopting telemedicine, by the growth of ATA, and by industry investing in telemedicine products and services.  I believe that telemedicine is now reaching an “inflection point” where the industry will grow at an exponential pace.  We are realizing that if one can bring the right clinical expertise, to the right place, at the right time, to make the right medical decision in a cost effective manner; quality can be improved while cost lowered.

Although the concept of telemedicine is simple and elegant, implementing telemedicine can be complex and messy.  This is not unexpected as fundamental change in any industry is never easy and without obstacles.  As one works to implement telemedicine in order to benefit from this enabling technology, one quickly uncovers the many challenges in actually building telemedicine programs.   Barriers created by existing payment structures, regulatory policies, IT architectures, corporate boundaries, resistance to change, and technology limitations, all need to be overcome.   It is these barriers or challenges, coupled with the significant potential value that can be created, which makes telemedicine ripe for innovators and entrepreneurs.   I believe that with persistent innovation, usually accompanied with the risk of capital, entrepreneurs can overcome these barriers and unleash the benefits of telemedicine into our healthcare delivery system.

To succeed in creating positive change I believe in the “divide and conquer” theory.  Trying to orchestrate a singular fundamental change to our healthcare delivery system to incorporate telemedicine systemically is too monumental a task, and will likely fail.  The pathway for entrepreneurs to innovate successfully is to find appropriately sized healthcare workflow challenges which can benefit from telemedicine solutions, and then work to gain adoption by healthcare providers.   With adoption, the entrepreneur can continue to build on that success and expand the vision and market opportunity.

As the telemedicine industry grows, applications are partitioned into two broad categories differentiated by the health status and location of the patient.   The first category we call “acute care telemedicine”, in which telemedicine is used to enable remote clinicians to immediately diagnose and treat sick patients.  These patients may be very sick and require immediate help from a specialist who is difficult to access.   The second category can be called “chronic disease management telemedicine”, where telemedicine is used to periodically and regularly monitor and manage a person’s chronic illness.

The needs of the telemedicine solution and the economic model vary greatly across these two categories.    Telemedicine solutions for acute care must enable a remote clinician to be interactively present in the patient environment and gather pertinent medical information through examination and data access to form a medical decision. Often, this decision can have significant (e.g. life or death) consequences.   If the remote clinician is the physician-in-charge, then the system must enable the physician to lead and establish dominion over the complete environment.  Conversely, telemedicine for chronic disease management generally does not require acute medical decision making, and the interactions are more coaching and mentoring in nature.    These solutions often connect healthcare providers into patient’s homes and therefore must scale cost effectively to a single patient/single system mode.

Telemedicine entrepreneurs should identify opportunities where they can innovate manageable-sized solutions that create significant value for the healthcare providers.  Still change is always difficult, particularly in the field of medicine where process and procedures are honed and perfected over decades to insure every patient receives consistently high quality care.   Therefore the solution must solve the problem in its entirety for adoption to occur.  For example, solutions should not be limited to technology alone, but rather need to be coupled with clinical protocols, business plans, training and implementation services, regulatory assistance, and even the ongoing monitoring and measuring of the solutions impact.  The level of multi-disciplinary depth and detail required to facilitate a change can tax even the most persistent entrepreneurs.

Healthcare is in a seismic state of transition that hasn’t been seen for many decades.  The fundamental goal of changing from “fee for service” to “fee for value”, and competitive pressures re-aligned to drive continued improvement of the quality/cost value curve, is enabling telemedicine to transition from a research topic to mainstream medicine.   Generational changes like these happen infrequently, and should be embraced by adventurous entrepreneurs.  We are at a time when the need for innovation and entrepreneurism in telemedicine is at a maximum!

The first-ever WIRED Health Conference in New York last week was an ideal forum for spreading the word about the latest innovations in telestroke and teleICU programs. ITH’s Charlie Huiner spoke at the conference, along with Yulun Wang (via RP-VITA) from Santa Barbara.

You may be sick of that overused phrase “thought leader,” but that’s exactly the type of person this conference draws. Most of the attendees could have easily worn badges saying “guru” or “visionary.” So there’s no better place to change the hearts and minds of the world’s healthcare elite.

Yulun and Charlie shared the stage with some notable names like genomics pioneer Craig Venter and Harvard’s Nicholas Christakis. But their mission there was not to bask in the limelight but to amplify the conference theme: using realtime data to drive healthcare decision-making.

InTouch Health’s RP-VITA

The InTouch presentation was something of a coming out party for RP-VITA, showcasing its environmental awareness capabilities. The ITH presenters noted that coordinated care at most hospitals remains elusive, and demonstrated how RP-VITA can help make it a reality.

Each year in the U.S., 100,000 lives are lost due to medical errors and miscommunication. By providing team-based care and easy documentation, RP-VITA can dramatically reduce those errors and missteps.

Conference attendees marveled at how RP-VITA can undock automatically and glide to a bedside on its own – all from a tap on an iPad. (Don’t forget that most of WIRED’s editors like Steven Levy are longtime fans of R2-D2.)

Thanks to the InTouch presentation, the WIRED world has a clearer understanding of how telestroke and teleICU programs can make healthcare decision-making faster, more accurate and less expensive. Click here to see the live stream of the InTouch presentation.