How Technology Can Assist in Telehealth E-Consultations

Digitalization of the healthcare sector in Germany has a saving potential of 42bn € p.a., according to McKinsey. McKinsey says that one of the most significant portions is seen in E-Consultation, with a potential of 5,7bn € p.a.

Considering that these numbers are just about Germany, you can imagine how huge the total E-Consultation potential will be globally. These numbers show that we can expect enormous activities in E-Consultation in the future, as the healthcare sector will want to leverage the potential.

E-Consultation and its Advantages

In its usual definition, an E-Consultation is a remote communication and collaboration between a patient and their doctor, who meet virtually via audio and video consultation.

For you as the patient, it has the tremendous advantage of not having to leave your home anymore for the doctor's visit, as you most likely feel bad anyway. By just at home clicking a meeting link at the arranged time on your laptop or mobile device, you get connected to the E-Consultation platform, typically entering a virtual waiting room, before the doctor invites you into the actual real-time communication meeting using audio and video. It is very likely that you, as a patient, have done this already.

For doctors and clinics, it opens new ways for patient engagement, with the main advantage being reduced traffic. You likely have already spent hours waiting in crowded physical doctor’s waiting rooms, so it's no surprise that E-Consultation accelerated a lot during the pandemic.

7 Ways Modern Technologies Assists in E-Consultations

Audio and video meetings for E-Consultations for patient-doctor visits are just the starting point. Applying modern technologies to E-Consultation will go far beyond A/V conferencing. Technologies like conversational and Generative AI, Augmented Reality (AR), IoT, or bots continuously advance and will assist the doctor in better and faster understanding patient’s symptoms and helping in determining diagnosis and treatment:

1. Voice and Video Analytics

Voice analysis will give doctors hints and estimations, helping to diagnose. This is not only about spoken words but also about HOW the words are spoken, providing insights into the patient’s sentiment and mood. As for video, a patient typically looks quite different, depending on whether they have a cold or severe influenza.

2. Text-based Conversations

Text will be an alternative to the voice channel for patients with disabilities. Analytics of written text will be supported, like analytics of the speech channel.

3. Quick Access to Electronic Health Records (EHRs)

Past patient visits will automatically be fetched by the system in real-time (e.g., based on triggers from voice analytics) and presented to the doctor’s E-Consultation screen GUI, helping to assist.

4. Video Overlay and AR

These techs will allow digital annotation of the video the doctor sees from the patient. For example, potentially relevant previous EHR record information (e.g., otitis media diagnosis six weeks back) will be digitally annotated to the patient’s video the doctor is seeing, as the system detects that this may be concerning the patient’s current problems.

5. IoT and Wearables Integrations

Wearables for measuring blood pressure or blood glucose will provide additional insights to the doctor about the patient’s current health condition parameters.

6. Doctors’ Assistant Bots

Bots for assisting patients in scheduling meeting appointments with the doctor are already known. AI-powered doctor assistants will support doctors in analyzing all the multi-modal patient data generated during the telehealth E-Consultation in real-time and post-call. As an outlook, at least for routine consultations, the patient will be directly writing or talking to a chat or voice bot or, as it is called, a doctor’s digital twin.

7. Diagnoses Code Help

AI will help doctors predict and determine the appropriate ICD-10 or ICD-11 codes. These are the codes for the ca. 17.700 diseases, standardized by the World Health Organization (WHO), that the doctor needs to determine and provide to health insurance companies. It is difficult for the doctor to get this all right without technology support.

E-consultation platforms must meet high standards regarding security measures (e.g., end-to-end security), personal data protection (e.g., GDPR), and standard interfaces (e.g., FHIR—Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) to provide the necessary trust. At the same time, the systems need to be easy to use to lower the bar for “not so much digital natives.”

E-Consultation offers tremendous benefits for all involved stakeholders:

• It has enormous potential for improving efficiency and cost savings in the healthcare sector.
• For doctors (practitioners and clinics), it allows for new ways of patient collaboration, workflow integration, and better assistance through technology.
• Due to competition, the IT industry has the potential to create innovative E-Consultation platforms, solutions, and applications.
• Most importantly, it avoids the patients' having to physically go to the doctors or clinics and sit in crowded waiting rooms while they are not feeling well.

In 10 years or more, patients will probably meet with doctors in a metaverse clinic, but this is a different story and probably subject to future exploration.

For now, E-Consultation can be compared to working from home. However, face-to-face contact is valuable occasionally, and the same is true when visiting your doctor. In the end, the best experiences will be hybrid.

E-Consultation for Other Vertical Markets

Beyond E-Consultation in healthcare, it is evident that E-Consultation can be applied to other vertical markets. Wherever a person seeks support and wants to consult remotely—in retail, financial services, public sector, or others—there is another use case for E-Consultation. One only needs to adapt to the vertical’s processes and workflows and integrate with sector-specific tools. Imagine how large the overall potential market for E-Consultation will be.

Mitel’s E-Consultation Offering for Telehealth

For an introduction to what Mitel can do for its clinical customers to leverage remote telehealth patient engagement through E-Consultation and workflow integration, learn about our Virtual Care Collaboration Service.