Virtual primary care is here – what are the ingredients for success?

Dedi Gilad, TytoCare CEO and Co-Founder, discusses the industry wide shift to virtual care and lists the key ingredients to eventual virtual primary care adoption.
 
Speakers
Dedi Gilad
Dedi Gilad
CEO and Co-founder
Joanna Braunold
Joanna Braunold
Content and Communications
The session was a discussion about virtual primary care and its growing trend in the healthcare industry, during the Reuters Total Health event in 2021. The discussion covered what virtual primary care is, the challenges it faces, and how TytoCare fits into the picture. 
Key Insights
  • Virtual primary care is a shift from physical to digital primary care, offering a full continuum of care including urgent, chronic, and preventive care.
  • The trend of virtual primary care was accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, which necessitated a shift towards online health services.
  • Trust, patient behavior change, and business modalities are the three key elements required for successful implementation of virtual primary care.
  • TytoCare, with its platform and medical kit, enables remote examinations and bridges the gap in virtual primary care by providing a device that allows patients to conduct self-examinations at home.
  • Future developments in virtual primary care involve the use of machine learning and AI to enhance remote diagnosis and decision support for clinicians.
Virtual primary care is rapidly emerging as a significant trend in telehealth, providing a holistic and seamless approach to healthcare.
Dedi Gilad explained that the recent shift toward virtual primary care stemmed from the COVID-19 pandemic, during which consumers had no choice but to turn to digital health services. “Virtual primary care is taking primary care from the urgent side to a much more holistic approach of providing end to end solution,” he described. He went on to detail the multiple modalities of virtual primary care, including the assignment of a primary care physician to a patient in the digital realm, providing a sense of familiarity and continuity.  

Virtual primary care is taking primary care from the urgent side to a much more holistic approach of providing end to end solution.

Dedi Gilad

CEO and Co-founder
Trust, patient behavior, and business modalities are the three key elements for successful implementation of virtual primary care. 
Gilad identified that for a successful shift towards virtual primary care, there needed to be trust from both consumers and providers, changes in patient behavior, and new business models. He said, “You’re shifting more care to digital. You need to trust both from the consumer angle as well as from the provider angle… Providers need to know that when they start practicing and working with chronic patients they can actually do the right diagnosis.” He also discussed the importance of changing patient behavior and creating new business models to incentivize patients to go digital.   

COVID alone cannot really bring that trend, to success. We need three elements to be working, closely, together and successfully in order to make it happen.

Dedi Gilad

CEO and Co-founder
TytoCare is playing a significant role in the virtual primary carelandscape, offering a device and platform that enables remote physical examinations.
Gilad shared about the role of TytoCare in the virtual primary care sector. He introduced TytoCare’s handheld device, which allows remote physical examinations, bridging the gap in the virtual health space. He elaborated, “Tyto really becomes a remote ears and eyes and hands of the clinician at the home of a patient. Basically, it’s a mobile device, fits to your palm, of your hand, connected to a smartphone that enables different kind of exams.” He concluded by mentioning future developments, including machine learning and AI capabilities to aid remote diagnosis and decision-making.  

TytoCare is building a lot of machine learning and AI around the data that we collect, obviously, very securely and identified according to all the regulatory needs but we can add capabilities to help diagnose remotely, automatically raise alerts, bring decision supports to clinicians.

Dedi Gilad

CEO and Co-founder