Telemedicine – and in particular, telemedicine apps – is currently a hot topic in the field of smartphones. Digital technology has allowed this once-outlier treatment plan to enter the mainstream, and it’s growing exponentially month to month. People all over the U.S. are benefitting from digital access to clinical consultations with their doctors; the telemedicine movement is bringing equal opportunity health care to all areas of the county, including those rural regions which were previously neglected or didn’t have convenient access to primary care physicians or specialists.
Much of the telemedicine revolution has been spearheaded by the continuing development of the smartphone, which has gone from strength to strength in the last decade. Much of our lives are now channeled through our phones, specifically apps, and telemedicine is no different. Telemedicine apps are key to changing the health care landscape for all Americans, providing cheaper and better quality access to treatments and medicine. But there are a lot of apps out there; the name of the game when it comes to app development is competition, and the health care sector is no different. With that in mind, here’s a rundown of five telemedicine apps that you definitely need on your phone!
MDLIVE
MDLIVE is the perfect example of smartphone telemedicine in action. It provides a 24-hour communication line to doctors, which means you can avail of instantaneous medical advice; you can connect with a doctor in about fifteen minutes or less. You can seek treatment for all types of conditions, from physical afflictions to mental disabilities. Wherever you are in the world, as long as you have your phone with you, you’re able to get certified medical advice in no time at all.
If you have a smartphone – and who doesn’t these days? – all the benefits of telemedicine are available to you.
PingMD
While MDLIVE is perfect for broad medical advice on a range of subjects, PingMD is perfect for firing off concerns to your doctor and keeping a medical record of your chronic conditions. You can send text, pictures, or videos to your doctor, who then respond directly or forward your concern onto a colleague or someone else who’s informed in their network. Every “ping” you send to your doctor is logged in your digital medical record, which makes it extremely easy for medical staff to check up on your specific condition to date, and see if it’s something that can be handled over telemedicine communications, or if you need to come in for a visit. Also, PingMD is free for patients, and currently has over 10,000 doctors availing of its service on the other side of the table.
HelloMD
HelloMD‘s focus isn’t on immediate care; instead it endeavors to find you the perfect specialist for your specific condition. It’s the perfect app for tracking down the ideal specialist for your extremely specific condition, or one that requires a niche point of view. Although HelloMD isn’t an instantaneous as some other telemedicine services, it’s usually possible to get an appointment within 24 hours. This appointment can also be facilitated through telemedicine, which speaks to one of the major positives of the service; access to some of the best specialists the country has to offer, without the usual wait times or travel issues. Appointments with specialists are notoriously slow to set up, but with telemedicine, it can be a timely, painless process. You can also utilise HelloMD for second opinions from previous appointments. The app itself is free, but doctors will set their own rates, dependent on their consultation. You can hook your credit card up to it and pay via that for each meeting.
With so many useful telemedicine apps available, the face of health care in the U.S. is being revolutionized for the better.
HealthTap
HealthTap is the perfect app to answer any confounding questions you might have about a very specific problem. It’s an app that gives you access to a database of over 50,000 doctors and dentists from across the world for peer-checked responses for a whole variety of medical queries. Google searching symptoms is never a good idea, as the overload of information available online can lead to added stress and anxiety; very few of the opinions out there on the internet are informed, and uninformed diagnoses can be very dangerous indeed. Googling your symptoms will become a thing of the past with HealthTap. You can have a whole wealth of certified knowledge at your fingertips, 24 hours a day.
Pillpack
Telemedicine is excellent for prescribing online medication. Sites like MMJ Recs and Moosh are able to prescribe therapeutic, progressive new medicine like medical marijuana and emotional support animals over the internet with little or no hassle to the patient. Pillpack does the same thing; it’s a prescription-by-mail service that puts your medication into time and date-stamped packs that tell you the order in which you should take them. It also aligns with your health care provider to ensure your prescriptions are automatically renewed a month before your prescription runs out. The only additional charge to the usual price of medication is the shipping fee.