The Channel Wire

April 07, 2009

It's being hailed as Health Care 2.0. A group of doctors in a few neighborhoods throughout New York are utilizing the convenience of the Internet to provide the type of personal, accommodating service a neighborhood doctor would give in days of yore.

Here's how it works: A customer signs up at HelloHealth.com. That customer makes an online appointment to see a doctor, in person. The customer's profile includes adding a credit card number to pay for a $35 monthly fee for the service. Prices range from $100 for a simple visit to $200 for more complex ones. The doctors involved in the service will perform many of the routine procedures a primary care physician will, and they also offer more advanced ones, such as EKG and GYN exams.

Doctors will even make house calls to those in the immediate area of their practices.

HelloHealth.com is not affiliated with any insurance companies. Yet, if a patient's insurance allows him or her to see out-of-network doctors, then most, if not all, fees are covered.

Subscribers are encouraged to interact with their providers. Through HelloHealth.com, patients can IM, video chat or e-mail with doctors. Patients also have access to all of their records online.

Of course this has security implications. How is patient privacy maintained? Is HelloHealth.com subject to HIPAA or other regulations?

Dr. Jay Parkinson leads a team of about 25 HelloHealth.com developers. They are about 90 percent done building a new HIPAA-compliant platform that will be released in a few months to doctors all over the United States.

"We've built the equivalent of an Amazon Web store or esty.com," Parkinson notes, "but for doctors to create their profiles and set up shop."

Any vetted participating doctor can set up a HelloHealth.com practice wherever they practice. Parkinson also says, "Our investment and resources we've put into security are much more robust than banking applications."

Patients "friend" their doctors. Patients can give these doctors read and write access to their online records, so patients maintain control over their own privacy. Doctors create a profile, set up their availability, document their interactions and can "friend" and communicate with colleagues. "It's a little bit EMR [Electronic Medical Record] and a little bit social network for docs," Parkinson states.

HelloHealth.com also utilizes GetSatisfaction, a community tool for customer service. Although patients cannot interact with other patients in this community, they can freely make posts and ask questions about the service.

Is this the future of health care? It would seem that health care provided in this manner would be embraced by the more tech-savvy. In this economy, however, with so much of the population uninsured, the accessibility and reasonable fees of HelloHealth.com may make it an attractive option for many.