Introduction
The Tele-consultation product of company G1 Health is called G1 Empower Health. It is a Mobile Application and has been available since 2011. The solution providers value care delivery the most. Their business model is B2B, and also have white labelled products. They provide both mobile and web based applications for the doctors as well as patients. For patients, it is web-based patient portals.
Size of Healthcare Provider
The categories of healthcare providers that this solution can cater to are:
a) Individual Clinician
b) Clinics
c) Nursing Home/Small Hospital (less than 100 beds)
d) Large Hospital
Level of Specialization
The solution lends itself to use in the following levels of clinical specialisations:
a) Primary care
Expert Panel Evaluation
The platform has established training and onboarding processes for the doctors and assists them for the initial five to ten consultation sessions. Doctors can interact with patients in only asynchronous manner in video mode only. There is no separate admin module, it is interchangeable with a doctor module in application. Doctors get notification in the form of SMS for appointments. When the doctor is on call they can not do documentation. Once a patient joins, the doctor gets notification but the patient has to wait (waiting room is there). Doctors are expected to write on paper and upload by clicking images, preferably with the header having their details and it is shared with patients. This seemed to be the preferred way the UI was designed. The platform provides multimode interaction i.e., both audio and video. This solution supports basic note taking. Doctors could generate online prescriptions also and take detailed notes and diagnosis (SOAP format only). There is no feature for multi part calling or referral. The application could generate an online prescription with embedded e-signature. Sharing a prescription with a single doctor, cross referral not possible.
The patient side of the interface provides login for booking appointments using a web based application. Patients are expected to select a specialty and then a doctor. Following that the patient has to enter symptoms and then decide the time slot also (a lot of decision making is expected from the patient). The patient has to take responsibility for the appointment. They can cancel but not reschedule. Booking for family members allowed. Patient ID is validated by secure Login from phone number (verified using OTP); This has been designed more as a UI for emergency needs. Conference calling feature is available (having capability, not enabled right now) English and Telugu language are supported. Phone number is unique Id to login (unique for the family is internally generated). Mobile phone ownership is mandatory. All reports of patients are available to all doctors (till unsubscribed to individual doctors, by patient). Patient has control over data sharing access.
There is no feature suggesting compliance with standards like ICD/ LOINC/ SNOMED. It is a stand alone application not integrated with any HIS/ EMR. Patient feedback feature is there.
The consent is implicit only.
Additional Features
The solution also ensures following features:
a) Suitable for paediatric consultation
b) Feature for Bandwidth optimization
Solution Maturity Level
a) TPG compliant: 3a
b) Feature complexity: 4 [Partial]