Imagine being able to pick your next doctor virtually. Well, aside from actual face-to-face dialogue with a potential physician, Healthgrades’ new PatientConnect Video is moving the find-a-doc platform close enough.
In its latest effort to connect patients to nearby physicians Healthgrades has launched the artificial intelligence (AI) driven platform that provides data to educate and virtually connect people to nearby doctors and specialists.
PatientConnect, which links patients directly with doctors who specialize in specific conditions, has already ranked as one of the top physician search platforms with combined information on people and health practitioners. Once linked, consumers have access to everything from contact information to patient reviews, or the types of insurance the physicians accept.
The video platform delivers individual contact information, educational data about specific health conditions, and doctor ratings by patients, so people can connect to the right physician. For example, a patient suffering from rheumatoid arthritis can watch the PatientConnect Video and get simultaneously connected to a list of rheumatologists within close proximity.
“Every ad says, ‘talk to your doctor,’ but none of them actually help you find that doctor,” said John Mangano, SVP, business intelligence at Healthgrades, in a recent interview. “The technology is there to link a video message with specific doctors who are most likely to be able to help patients with a condition.”
Earlier this year, the Atlanta-based Healthgrades, which works with 1,500 hospitals across the country, debuted the first of its enterprise-level customer data platform (CDP) built for health systems. The platform was designed to help bridge the gap between healthcare data sources and connect internal and external data hubs surrounding hospital systems for a more comprehensive patient profile.
The video portal is right in line with consumer demand today. People want to shop for doctors the same way they search for a consumer product at Best Buy or look for a gift on Amazon. You need reviews and ratings, detailed information to pull patients in.
“There’s not an industry out there that people can’t research to determine what really is best in a given category,” said Mangano. “We’ve been taught to do this for smaller transactions—and health is more important than, you know, restaurants.”
