The COVID-19 pandemic jumpstarted digital health innovations accelerating the adoption of new technologies. Daniel Kivatinos, co-president and co-founder of DrChrono, an EverCommerce solution that is developing an essential platform and services for modern medical practices, shares his healthcare technology trends and predictions for 2022.
The Internet of Things (IoT) will become more common inpatient monitoring. As patients are seeking more remote medical care, IoT and wearables that can stream data to the provider and care team, this new breakthrough will allow the providers to get paid for remote monitoring but also enable patients to keep track of their own data. One simple example is an Internet connected weight scale at home, it will make a patient accountable and allow the provider to also track the patients progress.
Telehealth. Like last year, we are going to see more and more adoption of telehealth among patients and other specialties in 2022. Physicians, medical practices, urgent care clinics and care teams are turning to more virtual healthcare experiences. An Updox survey reported that 51 percent of respondents say that they would continue using telehealth services after the pandemic has ended because they like the convenience it offers.
Furthermore, a recent report from McKinsey indicates that “telehealth use increased 38X from the pre-COVID-19 baseline” further supporting that telehealth is here to stay. Daniel added, “Telehealth will become the norm in healthcare. I foresee it might even overtake normal in person visits in specific areas like mental health and physical remote therapy.”
DrChrono Inc. rolled all of the DrChrono features from iPad and iPad Pro into iPhone mobile EHR/practice management app. DrChrono EHR is fully compatible with the new iPad 7, iPhone 11 and iPhone 11 Pro. In addition, for the first time ever, a medical records app can now use Apple Pencil features.
New iPhone EHR Features
DrChrono created parity, putting all of the DrChrono features from iPad and iPad Pro into the iPhone. Using the new “Messages” icon on the DrChrono EHR on iPhone, physicians can get any information about their practice including incoming and outgoing faxes, lab results, prescription requests, referrals, and online appointments.
“Tasks” are also now available on iPhone to allow staff and physicians to track complex patient workflows. For example, if a provider orders a lab for a patient, a task can be set for the provider to follow up with that patient. On iPhone, some of the new “Tasks” features include task creation, custom statuses, categorization, filtering, searching, setting due dates, the ability to associate a task to inbox messages and/or patients and task templates for common tasks.
New iPad EHR and Apple Pencil Feature
DrChrono also supports the new seventh generation iPad, which includes a 10.2-inch retina display, support for Apple Pencil, a full-size smart keyboard, and A10 fusion chip at a $329.00 price point. DrChrono also just launched the first Apple Pencil medical record experience, allowing providers to double tap on Apple Pencil while drawing on medical record images.
“We are excited about the new iPad, iPhone and Apple Watch that were just announced. With our commitment to Apple, DrChrono just launched a big enhancement to our mobile EHR app on iPhone to ensure that we’re creating the very best experience on both iPad as well as iPhone,” said Daniel Kivatinos, Co-founder and COO of DrChrono. “We envision a world where providers can do everything on iPhone, making a physician’s life easier.” Kivatinos adds, ”It is the little things that make an amazing experience, for example the new Apple Pencil double-tap is a wow experience which allows providers to do their very best work while seeing patients.”
Mobile healthcare trends, they’re only going to get more prevalent. That said, drchrono provides its official take on the top six mobile healthcare trends that are on the minds of physicians, business leaders and patients.
Daniel Kivatinos, COO and Co-founder, drchrono throws his hat in the ring and takes a look at some noteworthy mobile healthcare trends and issues that will be headlines this year.
Consumer Accountable Care – Today’s mobile devices allow consumers to become more accountable for their care. As high deductible healthcare plans become more popular, consumers are empowered now more than ever with access to reviews of physicians and can also track comparison of prices for healthcare procedures. Education about how to manage their own health is now easier, so patients are savvier and more informed with access to more apps and websites.
Here are a few examples of some popular tools and apps that consumers are using to be more responsible and own their health:
Less is Now More – As physicians get paid less, physicians are finding tools to do more with less. For example, with just an iPad a physician can run its practice, accessing and managing patient data. According to a recent article in The USA Today, as the demand for healthcare goes up and as a shortage of 45,000 primary care physicians is predicted by 2020, more non-physicians are doing some of the work, such as nurse practitioners, pharmacists and physician assistants. Quality metrics software pushed through EHRs can also simplify digital health and assist with reimbursements, as well as quality and efficiency standards.
There is so much data coming at physicians on paper, they generally skim a medical record, sometimes missing key information. Organizing all of the data in a digital format flagging the most critical, relevant data pertaining to a patient is a key time saver. The reality of the situation is that with paper medical records this workflow isn’t possible.
Michael Nusimow, CEO, and Daniel Kivatinos, COO, co-founders of drchrono discuss the company, its goals, how to disrupt health IT and how mobile is being embraced by those in healthcare.
Tell me about drchrono, mission, goals and how it fits into the current landscape.
drchrono created a free electronic medical record (EMR) platform on the iPad, iPhone and cloud, and recently announced its newest app for iOS7. This is the first mobile EHR to support Apple’s new iOS7. Physicians are using mobile devices such as the iPad as a key business tool in their practice and it’s drchrono’s mission to enable the world’s doctors and patients to be better connected.
Daniel Kivatinos
On a more local level, we are looking to bring Silicon Valley technology and people into the forefront of the healthcare space. We are using cutting edge technologies like the iPad and SaaS software to deliver clinical and business tools for office based doctors.
Why use your talents in health IT? What drives you to serve this space?
We went to college together back East and several years after graduating we met up to learn that we both had family members with unfavorable healthcare experiences. We felt this urge to improve healthcare practices starting at the physician/patient level. We realized that a healthcare system built on faxing and shuffling papers is inefficient and thought so much more could be done to streamline the process via new technologies.
Based on our experiences, we witnessed that many office-based doctors were using paper charts for clinical work. If they have a patient taking 10 or more drugs or who has a very complex chart, they will waste a lot of time trying to understand the entire patient’s history. Seeing this need and personally suffering through bad healthcare experiences due to inefficiencies was the inspiration to start drchrono with the goal to digitize healthcare. We both knew we could build a software application that would create a better care experience.
