MedAdvisor adds online GP telehealth consult service to protect patients during COVID-19
MedAdvisor is extending its GP Link technology to enable patients to undertake telehealth consultations.
Digital medication management company MedAdvisor (ASX: MDR) will add a telehealth service to its online platform to help protect Australians from widespread impacts of the coronavirus pandemic.
The company will extend the GP Link feature within its platform to enable patients to participate in health-related telephone consultations with their doctors or with one of MedAdvisor’s on-demand general practitioners.
Post consultation, the doctor will issue a digital script to the patient or directly to their pharmacy of choice.
The new service is expected to be online next month and will complete MedAdvisor’s medication management loop by allowing most patients to conduct every part of the process remotely, from consultation to delivery of medications.
Next generation tool
Telehealth is gaining popularity around the world as the next generation of medication management, fuelled by fears that coronavirus could adversely impact certain patient groups such as the elderly and immuno-compromised.
The federal government recently extended the Medicare rebate to cover bulk-billed telehealth consultations with doctors and other health professionals as part of a $1.1 billion CoVid-19 funding boost to healthcare.
MedAdvisor chief executive officer Robert Read said the company was well placed to provide a “crucial service at scale”.
“The ability for patients to access these services without leaving home [promotes] social distancing and allows doctors and pharmacists to manage their dramatically-increased workflows,” he said.
“We have been developing this functionality over a number of years and will launch the service imminently to help protect our patients and assist our medical practitioners to maintain [our country’s] world-class health services.”
He said the service would be offered via an integration link between MedAdvisor’s GP Link technology and a medical clinic’s patient record system to ensure compliance with clinical governance standards for GP Accreditation.
The company’s digital platform provides an option for nominated carers to monitor the management of their patient’s medication and request repeat scripts, ensuring they do not need to leave home to access a pharmacy.
Clinic Connect
MedAdvisor also offers a professional collaboration tool for pharmacists and doctors known as Clinic Connect, which allows pharmacies to collate and electronically transmit prescription requests for patients in a managed setting.
The feature enables doctors the ability to receive and bulk-produce prescriptions from these script requests via the Clinic Connect portal, and complete an online update of a patient’s prescription history.
Pharmacies are billed for each script request processed via the platform.
Each month, MedAdvisor processes approximately 50,000 script requests for patients residing in 2,250 facilities including aged care, private hospitals, rehab centres, oncology, private clinics and hostels.
According to MedAdvisor, the average doctor will spend around three hours a month writing scripts and updating patient records.
MedAdvisor Clinic Connect automates this process, cutting it down to less than 10 minutes.
At mid-afternoon, shares in MedAdvisor were trading 8.75% higher at $0.435.