Continuous secure chat ensures broadening of screen care - #BHHMembersInitiatives

Keeping healthcare affordable has led to an enormous digitization drive in the healthcare sector. Hospitals, clinics and other healthcare providers have started using the possibilities offered by digital healthcare providers massively. During the pandemic, screen care has ensured that care can continue online. Due to rising costs, it now also appears to be the answer to keeping healthcare affordable. BHH member Webcamconsult, a digital healthcare platform, sees an increase in the needs of practitioners and healthcare consumers. The specialist in screen care adds the possibility to chat and app to the care communication platform at any time of the day. Patients who require long-term care in particular feel the need to easily consult their practitioner via chat. Telephone contact and contact online (video consultations) are already widely used in healthcare. In addition to these digital means of communication, a continuous secure chat option has now been added by Webcamconsult. Due to the increase in healthcare costs, many healthcare organizations are looking for (digital) options to reduce costs. Rising healthcare costs and an overburdened healthcare market There will be one increase of healthcare costs expected to be 6,3% in 2022 compared to 2021. The forecasting model of care and welfare shows that the shortage of care workers will increase from 49 thousand in 2022 to approximately 117 thousand people in 2030. VGZ indicates in their policy that e-health plays an important role in keeping healthcare affordable and available. Also CZ and other health insurers indicate that they want to apply more digital care. Suppliers to the healthcare market play a major role in keeping good healthcare affordable by offering support services and resources. Bert van Gerwen, CEO of Webcamconsult: “We have been developing digital healthcare since 2013. Due to the changing healthcare landscape in recent years, e-health has gained enormous momentum. Compare this to the early days of e-commerce. Now that we are also outgrowing the infancy in the healthcare IT sector, we see that the applications are developing at lightning speed on the basis of experience and demand from the market. For example, our relations indicated a need for a simple continuous chat function, which has now been developed and implemented. Healthcare must be and remain affordable and accessible to healthcare consumers. But systems must also meet the wishes of practitioners, otherwise they will not be used. A system can be extremely complex in the background, but the patient and the healthcare provider at the front should not notice this.” Digital care full replacement of physical care? According to CTO and co-founder of Webcamconsult Milan Tjioe, who also works as a dermatologist at Bravis Hospital, has developed digital care at lightning speed. Tjioe quotes: “The healthcare sector is a fairly traditional sector in which the implementation of digital healthcare did not go very quickly. Until Covid. After that, that mindset completely changed. You only see that patients, doctors, but also the suppliers of the applications need time to fully embrace it. GPs, for example, hardly use screen care. We implement a continuous chat option because it is useful to be able to communicate with each other via text before, during or after a video consultation." He also adds this example, "an assistant can ask a few questions in advance or point out something afterwards to the patient that he or she forgot to ask. Departments determine individually who has what rights in handling these online conversations. Our goal is to make e-health so accessible that it can compete with physical care. A physical examination will remain physical for the time being, but follow-up appointments or an exploratory meeting can often be handled digitally. Blended care is a bit of a buzzword at the moment, but it is also the reality that is now playing out in healthcare.” Client app introduction In the further development of the Webcamconsult platform also releases a client app. The patient can use the continuous chat function for this. The design of the app takes less digitally skilled clients into account, so that digital care is accessible to a broad target group. Learn more about it HERE.