Doctor at your fingertips: An exploration of digital visits from stakeholders’ perspectives
Technological advances and the evolution of mobile technologies enable patients
to meet their doctors through their smartphones. While offering the opportunity
of virtual visits to patients, there are also challenges of this development. The
purpose of this study was to increase the understanding of virtual visits, as
perceived by experts working in telemedicine companies. . To serve to this
purpose, authors conducted semi-structured interviews with managers and
employees in eight telemedicine companies. The analysis of the empirical data
confirmed the importance of virtual visits and their efficiency. The potential
of virtual visits is expected to increase significantly, should they make use
of remote devices to transfer real-time data from patients to physicians. In
such a case, virtual visits are expected to cover approximately 70-75% of
medical cases. However, the use of remote devices must be taken with caution
and specific conditions need to be taken into account. We encourage researchers
to perform research on promising technologies such as artificial intelligence
and remote diagnostic devices, which could make more diagnoses and conditions
being possible to treat by virtual visits. This is even more important in the
light of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.