Company pushes online consultations in a visual direction

Even though videoconferencing may be getting less expensive, telehealth advocates say physician desire for and use of the technology is a long way from mainstream.

By Tyler Chin, AMNews staff. March 21, 2005.

Videoconferencing isn't just for salespeople and executives anymore. Now, thanks to the plummeting costs of setting up a videoconferencing system, there is a push to make it a tool for doctor-patient interaction.

For example, one company -- MyMD Inc., a Alpharetta, Ga., online consultation company -- is outfitting physicians with free videoconferencing equipment, enabling them to conduct videoconferencing-based consultations in real time over a high-speed Internet connection.

The company is making that move because videoconferencing technology has become inexpensive and good enough that it can now offer telehealth services at the desktop at a fraction of the $50,000 to $100,000 that work stations cost just a few years ago, said Michael Chalkley, CEO of MyMD. Coupled with an estimate by Harris Interactive that 65% of all Internet connections in the country are broadband, inexpensive technology could mean that it is feasible for physicians to jump into telehealth and migrate from e-mail consultations to videoconferencing with patients, experts say.

"Certainly, it's important to recognize that the implementation of distance diagnoses for therapy from a variety of settings is just a reality of one direction that medicine is going," said Michael Goldrich, MD, chair of the American Medical Association's Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs. "So, the question is to implement that in a fashion that meets the standards of care so that patients continue to get high quality of care and [that] also is done in an ethical fashion."