Trusted doctor available to the patient 24 hours a day, 7 days a week? Something that sounds like a futuristic vision has a chance to become reality. Doctor.One sets the goal of creating a standard of care in which each patient has a trusted doctor. Tomasz Rudolf, CEO and Maciej Malenda, COO, talks about his motivations and plans for the future.
- Doctor.One is a doctor who knows you, available directly in your secure messenger
- – We create a new standard of medical care in which doctors guide their trusted patients, remaining in constant contact with them – the program creators explain
- – No need to make an appointment – we just write in the application as if to a friend, send photos and documents – they add
- More information can be found on the Onet homepage
Diana Żochowska, MedTvoiLokony: What is Doctor.One and how does it work? How is this solution different from others on the market?
Tomasz Rudolf, CEO Doctor.One: Doctor.One is a doctor who knows you, available directly in your secure messenger. We create a new standard of medical care in which doctors guide their trusted patients, remaining in constant contact with them.
There is no need to make an appointment – we just write in the application like to a friend, send photos and documents. The doctor who guides us will answer you during the daily round at the latest. He can write back, call the patient back, send a prescription, order tests, and when he deems it justified – meet him in person. It can also, what is equally important, write to the patient himself, check, for example, whether the sick child endured the night well, whether the antibiotic worked or remind about the control examination. All this in a simple subscription, the amount of which the doctor determines himself, adjusting it to his specialization, work mode and the patient’s needs.
The subscription-based business model is becoming more and more popular. It is already the norm in vod services, mobile applications, and is also being introduced by more and more publishers. But where did you get the idea of having a doctor subscribed?
Maciej Malenda, COO Doctor.One: We believe that direct subscription, connecting physician and patient, is the most conducive to building continuity of care. Thanks to this, the doctor can get to know the patient better, support him in the prevention or chronic diseases. Young parents of a newborn child may have the constant support of a pediatrician who knows their child, what allergies he has, how he reacts to various medications. If you are obese, you may have the support of a trusted family doctor and dietitian to help them look after themselves. An athlete may have a “personal physician” to help him better understand the data collected by modern devices that monitor sleep, glucose level and heartbeat during training.
In today’s system, too often the patient is anonymous, he has to bounce door to door, presenting his situation and medical history from scratch. The system is reactive – until the patient comes back, doctors don’t know if the therapy is working. Then we lose something that was at the heart of medical care – the trusted relationship between the doctor and the patient.
How do you want to convince both doctors and patients? Why should they choose Doctor.One?
MM: Doctors who hear about Doctor.One often tell us that they have waited a long time for a model of medical practice in which they can lead patients on their own terms, without being imposed (and ever shortened) visit times. They dream of a return to relational medicine, not bureaucracy. They want to support their regular patients, but also keep privacy and space for a quiet rest after work. Our model of “everyday rounds” gives them freedom, independence and subjectivity – they can set the hours for asynchronous care over patients themselves, they also decide how much time they spend on resolving each case reported by patients. They can earn more by building their group of regular patients, without having to take on countless shifts and visits.
TR: For the patient, the most important thing is the feeling that I have someone who cares about me, to whom I can always write on such an important issue as my health or the health of my loved ones. Such a trusted doctor gives you a sense of security, you can send him a photo of your child’s rash during the holidays or consult the course of hospitalization. Our patients also appreciate when doctors themselves write to them. Simple «How is Basia?» the day after visiting the pediatrician, he shows the little patient’s parents that they do not have to be alone with the disease.
In addition, patients begin to understand that the relationship with the doctor does not have to be based only on a visit and a quick 10-15 minute meeting. Our relationship lasts for months and at any time you can ask a simple question to the doctor and build even more confidence in his recommendation.
Can a patient who has a doctor subscribed to in the Doctor.One application have contact with him only remotely, or does the service also include stationary visits?
MM: We believe stationary visits are indispensable from time to time. In the standards of care developed by us, we assume that in order to build trust between the doctor and the patient, such a “first-time” visit should take place live, in the office. Between visits, the doctor and the patient can remain in constant remote contact. Our doctors can determine the scope of the subscription themselves – some of them include visits to the office, others also home visits or test packages. All subscriptions, however, include unlimited remote contact and consultations in the application, including, for example, issuing prescriptions.
Your password is “The Doctor Who Knows You”. What can a patient do to benefit from Doctor.One if their trusted doctor is not in the system?
TR: We only started operating six months ago, so we cannot provide access to such a service for everyone yet. Anyone can ask a doctor if he is already available on the Doctor.One platform or recommend a trusted specialist to us in the application. We are doing everything so that thousands of doctors will soon support their patients in this way.
What markets, apart from Polish, do you intend to enter with your service?
MM: We believe that patients everywhere want to be under the care of a doctor who knows them and who they can contact easily and quickly. We hope that someday this standard of care will be universal worldwide. Access to doctors is becoming an increasing challenge everywhere – according to the WHO, there will be an estimated 2030 million shortage by 4.
For now, we are working on entering the first markets of Western Europe. Markets such as Portugal, Spain and Italy are largely similar to us.
Do you need a doctor’s appointment? A referral for an examination or a sick leave? You can find all of this on the HaloDoctor platform. Take a look!
Finally, I would like to ask you about the most interesting technologies in medicine from your point of view – which three areas are you observing with particular interest?
TR: They are definitely fascinating advances in geneticsallowing us to more precisely identify diseases or their risks and personalize therapies. On the other hand, we believe that the future of medicine will be based on gigabytes of data collected by patients – at home, while sleeping or training – not only from time to time in the office. That is why we support the creators of devices enabling patient monitoring and remote diagnosis. We believe that many of our doctors will use these innovations to better support their patients between visits, discover abnormalities earlier and monitor the effects of treatment.
MM: We are convinced that thanks to this data, artificial intelligence algorithms they will be able to support medical staff more effectively, saving time and removing unnecessary bureaucracy. The future of medicine, however, is not only AI and automation – we believe that there will always be a place for real, human empathy, which is the basis of the doctor-patient relationship. In a world where we are only supported by robots in our disease, we would be very lonely.