We recently came in touch with 3G Doctor, a company based in County Kerry, Ireland, that is leading the charge in mHealth through their mobile phone based telemedicine application. The service allows anyone in the UK over the age of 18 to use their 3G mobile telephone to have a video-chat consultation with a General Medical Council registered physician.
3G Doctor enables the caller to fill out a patient record directly over their phone which can then be seen in advance by the physician along with their stored electronic medical record, allowing the physician to adequately prepare themselves for the consultation. David Doherty, Head of Business Development at 3G, explains more about how the system works in this recent interview with Mohammad Al-Ubaydli of Patients Know Best.
This sounds like a really exciting service that is a natural extension of where companies like American Well and TelaDoc will probably go in the future. The telehealth market is predicted to grow at over 70% year-on-year reaching 55 million by 2016 so it’s very encouraging to see that a European company is at the forefront of this movement. And telehealth in the context of mHealth has the potential to improve the lives of millions around the world that don’t otherwise have an internet connection with laptop & webcam.
This powerpoint presentation created in 2006 gives some more insight into the Doctor 3G system.
We’re located in Switzerland so we haven’t been able to test this system out ourselves, but in case you have, please leave a comment about your opinion of 3G Doctor and its strengths and weaknesses.
