In this issue of Insights Care, we bring forth the efforts of “10 Most Prominent Telehealth Solution Providers in 2021” that ensured everyone had access to medical consultation.
10 most prominent telehealth solution providers in 2021
4. The COVID-19 pandemic ushered the importance of
telehealth services to an all-time high. The
pandemic has opened doors of opportunities for
telehealth solutions. Telehealth is as effective as regular
visits to doctors and is also an affordable option. Besides, it
safeguards the health of both patients and doctors.
Physical consultation with doctors became restricted due to
the pandemic. But healthcare was not limited per se, thanks
to telehealth services and solution providers. Some health
conditions need regular monitoring, check-up, and
consultation with medical practitioners. Telehealth was the
right solution.
With telehealth services already in practice, patients could
avail online consultations. Medical practitioners who were
not into telehealth quickly shifted to telehealth portals and
guided their patients for virtual consultations.
The healthcare industry had to ensure that they had enough
trained people to handle the influx of online patients.
Patients, too, resorted to the solution offered in such critical
situations after overcoming the initial skepticism of using
technology for health-related consultation. The ease of use
and the necessity gradually translated into the patient’s
choice to stay healthy and safe. The credit of the rise in
telehealth services goes to everyone involved in providing
and seeking healthcare. Pandemic or no pandemic,
telehealth, and telemedicine are here to stay for good.
The global telehealth and telemedicine market is expected
to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 37.7
percent and reach USD 191.7 billion by 2025.
Population growth, the need to expand healthcare and
provide easy access to everyone, growing prevalence of
chronic diseases, lifestyle diseases, technological
developments, public awareness, etc., have driven the
telehealth market. Many players plunged into this
healthcare vertical while those already in it upscaled it.
Without the telehealth solution providers during crisis
situations, the healthcare segment would have found it
difficult to provide optimum care to their patients, while the
latter would have probably been deprived of healthcare.
In this issue of Insights Care, we bring forth the efforts of
“10 Most Prominent Telehealth Solution Providers in
2021” that ensured everyone had access to medical
consultation. We chose a few telehealth companies known
for their quality and quick service.
Have a great read.
Sumita Sarkar
Healthcare
Anywhere Anytime
9. Description
Featuring
AMC Health
amchealth.com
Ryan Fox, EVP,
Sales Customer
Success, and Dean
Panovich, Chief
Revenue Office
AMC Health provides continuous visibility into individual
patient’s health status by connecting patients to their clinical
team on a real-time bases by expanding their care beyond the
walls of hospitals, doctors’ offices and outpatient settings.
Braster S.A
braster.eu
Dariusz Karolak
President
Braster S.A was founded in 2008 by a group of Polish
medical doctors and scientists who have developed a
breakthrough method of using liquid crystals for diagnosing
breast cancer.
EdenHealth
edenhealth.com
Matt McCambridge
Co-founder and CEO
Hims & Hers Health,
Inc forhims.com
Andrew Dudum
Founder and CEO
hims is a one-stop telehealth service for men's wellness and
care, providing treatment options for hair loss, ED & more.
Iris Telehealth Inc
iristelehealth.com
Andy Flanagan
CEO
Iris Telehealth was founded with the goal of creating a more
patient-friendly telemedicine company that is able to
quickly adapt to an organization’s needs.
Denis Khitrov, CEO
and Kirill Filippov,
Founder
MedM is the maker of award-winning remote care
software platform and personal & family health
monitoring apps.
MedM
medm.com
Marc Atiyeh
CEO and Founder
Pawp gives you unlimited 24/7 access to licensed vets & a
$3,000/year pet emergency fund. It’s like pet insurance,
but better.
Rhinogram
rhinogram.com
Dr. Keith Dressler
D.D.S., M.S.D.,
Chairman, and CEO
Telemedico
mytelemedico.com
Joel Okner
MD
TeleMedico is a Telemedicine company that deliveries
health-related services using technologies in the support of
patient care, and health education.
Eden Health keeps your people productive and healthy
with personalized, full-spectrum primary care, mental
health care, and insurance benefit navigation.
Rhinogram’s virtual care platform allows providers to offer
virtual visits through live video consults, text-based image and
document exchange without the patient downloading an app
or logging into a portal.
Hope Care
hope-care.pt
Jose Paulo Carvalho
Founder
Hope Care, S.A provide e-Health services and ensure the
availability of data and information to customers and
their caregivers.
Pawp Inc
pawp.com
Company Name
14. Stay in touch.
Subscribe to Insightscare Get Insightssuccess
Magazine in print, & digital on www.insightscare.com
Check should be drawn in favor of :
INSIGHTS SUCCESS MEDIA TECH LLC
16. Bringing Healthcare to Your Home
Jose Paulo
Carvalho
Founder
14|December 2021|www.insightscare.com
17. The leading telehealth solution providers around the
world exhibit their excellence in remote delivery of
healthcare services. They provide evaluation,
diagnosis, and evaluation facilities to patients without any
in-person visit.
These companies enable patients to communicate from their
homes by using internet and other technologies – providing
lasting treatment experiences to the patients.
One such established telehealth solutions provider is Hope
Care. It is one of the first european companies in the digital
health area to combine services, technological platforms,
and products, allowing the provision of a totally innovative
social and health care service.
By promoting the well-being of its clients wherever they
are, Hope Care collects and monitors vital signs at a
distance and provides digital health service through
advanced technologies. The company primes for the
development of m-Health concepts together with support
services.
At the helm of Hope Care’s ceaseless success is its
Founder, Jose Paulo Carvalho. His vision came from a
personal experience when his mother was diagnosed with
amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in early 2003. Mr.
Carvalho states that the lesson learned from this experience
has 3 key points:
– His mother wanted to live independently, so the challenge
was to build a system where she could communicate and be
free to make her own decisions.
– She didn’t want to be institutionalized, so he needed to
build a remote system to send the data to the hospital and to
be sure she is secure.
– Facilitate the access to care by coordinating different
teams (from Social Care and Health) so that she could have
“the Hospital at Home.”
In 2009 Jose started an Executive MBA in AESE/IESE and
jointly with more 2 colleagues, Simão Calado and Pedro
Ferreira, designed Hope Care as their final project based
on those 3 key principles. The concept was well received
and pushed them to start the company in 2012.
The vision that they implemented in the company was a
simple statement: Build a hospital at home without
barriers!
In the following interview, Mr. Carvalho shares details
about Hope Care’s inception, the various services it
provides, its opinion about the industry, and its future plans.
Following are the highlights of the interview:
Please brief our audience about Hope Care, its mission,
and the key aspects of its stronghold within the
HealthTech niche.
When my colleagues and I founded Hope Care, it was clear
that the ageing of the population and the growing
prevalence of chronic diseases would be the two biggest
challenges that Portugal and Europe would face in this
century.
The founders’ opinion focused largely on the belief that, as
connected care solutions, they could ease the burden of
society by allowing more efficient care. We developed a
solution that allows people to live independently in their
homes for longer and with more quality of life. The goal is
to allow access (and this is a fundamental word throughout
the process) without barriers to caring through technology.
The pandemic situation has proven our vision: digital
solutions, such as Hope Care, are a key technical help to
care for people and facilitate access to quality life support.
Tell us more about the telehealth solutions that give
your company a distinctive edge to stand out from the
competition?
Hope Care has developed a solution, named HCAlert, that
allows you to monitor chronic patients at home through
their smartphone by collecting what we call ‘Life Data’.
We aim to create
and provide the
citizens with the
most advanced
digital health
platform
10 Most Prominent Telehealth Solution Providers In 2021
15|December 2021|www.insightscare.com
18. In addition to vital signs monitoring such as Oximetry,
Heart Rate, Body Temperature, we also monitor physical
activity, environmental and behavioral data, among others.
For us it is the data set that allows to measure the true
condition of the patient.
Our differentiating factor is that all this information is
analyzed through screening algorithms that helps the health
professional to detect in time a worsening of the health
condition.
This improves the clinical care process because it is known
who should be taken care of in real time and without the
patient having a serious event. What we have already
proved is that we were able to detect early deviations that
would lead to the hospitalization of the person with the
chronic disease, such as COPD or Heart Failure. It is here,
with proven evidence, that we distinguish ourselves from
the competition.
As a seasoned business leader what is your opinion on
the effects of the pandemic on the healthcare sector, and
what were the challenges that your company came
across?
I ’m optimistic by nature.
The pandemic has challenged the status quo of health
organizations and for me this is good. It means that what
was taken for granted is no longer so and that it is necessary
to change enormously the way health care is provided.
Digital systems have demonstrated that new care pathways,
such as video consultation, telemonitoring patients at home,
developing new care techniques, new vaccines, all this is
possible.
The most important thing is that it has become clear that
there is a role outside the hospital for health care and that
the hospital must rethink the way it operates. Health
systems must rethink prevention and not be reactive to the
disease. The hospital must be at patient’s home and not
waiting patients in the hospital.
The pandemic has demonstrated there has to be a focus on
monitoring patients at home, promote patient self-care
(which implies better training of citizens and their
accountability) and responsible personal decision/action
when each of one of us face the disease.
Without this, the systems will not have the capacity in the
future to serve the population and, as consequence, citizens
will not have access to health care. There is an openness of
mentality in various actors of the health system to adopt
digital technologies, but it is essential not to miss the
opportunity.
For Hope Care, the biggest challenge will be to find the best
way for this type of digital health system to be funded to
allow widespread access. My view is that there should be a
prescription, like medication, when the doctor knows what
kind of system will benefit the patient at that time. This will
allow a strong regulation and competition for the benefit of
the citizens.
With continuous development in technologies such as AI
and ML, what is your prediction about the future of the
telehealth solutions niche?
The 5G will bring a new step for connectivity of data and
will allow more information about the citizen.
16|December 2021|www.insightscare.com
19. From one side this will allow to build a predictive system
that helps to improve the care and, on the other side, will
challenge healthcare providers to create new care pathways,
new clinical decision systems, new personalized care, and
new medication.
In my point of view, we will face two challenges:
• The healthcare professionals’ roles will change, and we
will have a gap between what technology can deliver
versus healthcare professionals’ adoption and
acceptance.
• A huge ethical dilemma that will start from discussions
about the limit where we can accept a clinical decision
by a Bot, where we can be intruders correlating data or
knowing that an event can occur with certain person or
how we can force or not to comply with a certain
clinical decision.
This discussion already exists with the Digital Certificate
for vaccinated persons, so imagine when we can have much
more data for a clinical decision in real time!
The future is bright, the question will be about adoption,
regulation, and reimbursement.
What would be your advice to the entrepreneurs and
healthcare enthusiasts aspiring to venture into
telehealth?
Digital Health is in green field yet. There is a long run and
new innovative solutions to build.
My advice is that you must be challenged by what seems to
be impossible, to be persistent and to focus on solving a real
problem that impacts on each person’s lives.
How do you envision scaling your company’s operations
and offerings in 2021?
This year we are already operating in Switzerland, Austria,
and Italy. Our perspective is to consolidate screening
algorithms and adapt them to local reality, so we are testing
these markets.
If the result is positive, as we expect, then we will seek to
enter in more European markets. We are currently
developing predictive systems applied to chronic patient
screening and looking forward to a new round of
investment for this new phase of the company.
Exhibiting True Excellence
Hope Care was founded in 2012 and has
received several recognitions and published
impact.
In 2015 it received a recognition from NOS
Innovation Award (Telco) where Hope Care
was recognized as one of the most innovative
Portuguese companies acting in m-Health
area.
In 2017 the Portuguese Coimbra Hospital
(CHUC) published the PoC results from COPD
patients using HCAlert: 50% reduction in
hospitalizations and 30% of emergency room
admissions compared to non-telemonitored
patients.
In same year the ANI – Agência Nacional de
Inovação, SA (Portuguese National Innovation
Agency) distinguished Hope Care with Born
from Knowledge Award, an important
recognition of a company that born from MBA
students.
In 2019 Hope Care was published by
Portuguese Covilhã Hospital (CHCB) the PoC´s
results from CHF patients using HCAlert: a
56% reduction in hospitalization, 45%
reduction in the days of Hospitalization and
reduction of emergency episodes by 89%
when compared in the same period.
These results allowed Hope Care to became
one of preferred solutions by Microsoft.
In 2020 the company started the ISO 13 485
ClassIIb certification process and the
EUDAMED registration as Medical Device
manufacturer.
At end of 2020 the company received from
ANI – Agência Nacional de Inovação, SA
(Portuguese National Innovation Agency) the
recognition of the competence of Hope Care
SA in research and development.
17|December 2021|www.insightscare.com
20. and its Scope in the
Post-Pandemic
World
C
OVID-19 is a big term in today’s world. Since the
pandemic, if people have experienced something
good, it is delivery of health care and health
information services via remote technologies. Before the
pandemic started, visiting a doctor, a hospital, or a clinic
was a hectic task to do, which involved longer waiting
times and delayed appointments. The efficiency,
effectiveness, and cost associated with telehealth were
rewarded with disbelief by providers and patients alike.
However, the pandemic and the lockdown have pointed out
telehealth as an essential and a good innovation to have,
especially in the crisis.
Post-pandemic, we can experience telehealth resulting in
virtual check-ups and remote diagnosis with effective
measures to treat the patients with the best methods
possible. During the pandemic, many people started to use
these services to fulfill their medical needs. In the process,
people discovered that telehealth is providing far more
amenities compared to video visits between the patients and
healthcare providers.
We can assume the numerous advantages of telehealth for
both patients and healthcare providers post-pandemic.
Digital Health
18|December 2021|www.insightscare.com
22. Ÿ Convenience and comfort
One obvious advantage of telehealth is the comfort and
convenience of having a medical visit without physically
traveling to the doctor’s office or clinic. Telehealth visits
will easily fit into patients’ busy schedules. As the patients
will have an option to meet their health experts or physician
using any electronic gadget such as phone, tablet, laptop, or
computer, patients can access or schedule an appointment
whenever they will have free time.
In addition, those patients who are injured or in the stage of
recovery will not have to travel to the clinic or hospital for
their check-up, as telemedicine will allow these patients to
stay in a safe and comfortable environment.
Ÿ Suitability of care
With telehealth, the patients will easily receive the care
when they need it, and they will not have to wait for an
appointment. In emergency cases, telehealth will allow the
patients to receive care immediately and help them until
they reach the hospital.
One of the advantages of telehealth we will experience soon
is that: telemedicine will be accessible on weekends and
holidays, especially when healthcare and clinics are closed.
Telehealth will offer us an alternative source of immediate
care.
Ÿ Controlling the spread of infections
Telehealth is currently an excellent way to help and control
the diseases that cause infections and illness; a recent
example is COVID-19. Telehealth protects both healthcare
professionals and patients by holding patient-clinical
meetings at a distance, making it the most effective way to
control the spread of infections. Experts already assume
that telehealth will soon come up with enhanced methods to
control the spread of infections and treat the patients with
additional precise medication required with advanced
technology.
Ÿ Telehealth will provide a better assessment
It will be an advantage for some specialists to treat the
patients in their home environment when they are assessing
their condition. Observing the surroundings will provide the
doctors with the data that will help understand the patient’s
condition. As per the experts’ prediction, neurologists and
physical therapists will find it easier to observe the patient’s
ability to navigate their home environment while
undergoing treatment.
Ÿ Telehealth will be responsible for family connections
It will be helpful for the patient to have a family member
with them when they are undergoing treatment or a
consultation with their doctor. A family member will be
able to help the patients to answer the questions or
additional information. In addition, a family member will
be able to keep and maintain a record of valuable
information from the visits.
Ÿ Efficient cost-saving and management
Telehealth visits will not require patients to travel, and it
will help in lowering the secondary expenses. Telemedicine
will offer time and cost-saving by decreasing transportation
costs, reducing the need for childcare, and reducing time
away from work. Analysis from the research indicates that
patients who will use telehealth will spend less time in the
hospital, and that is going to reduce the associated cost of
the additional hospital bills and other expenses related to
hospital medicine.
Eventually, telehealth will contribute towards reducing the
overhead medical costs, as healthcare providers will pay
less amount of money towards their facility’s additional
expenses. By using telehealth in medical practices, even
doctors can make medical appointments easier, more
convenient, and less expensive for many of their patients.
The bottom line
Telehealth has been an invaluable tool, especially during the
COVID-19 pandemic. It has offered numerous advantages,
both in treating the patients suffering from COVID-19 and
treating patients with unrelated conditions from a distance,
contributing its services to prevent the spread of the disease.
However, looking at the advantages of telehealth we can
experience now, it can be assumed that these services will
contribute more efficiently and will continue to apply in the
post-pandemic world.
-Abhishek Joshi
20|December 2021|www.insightscare.com
24. The impact of technology on
healthcare is undeniable. From
electronic medical records to
mobile apps, the way healthcare
professionals diagnose and treat
patients has changed dramatically in
recent years.
A study by Accenture found that 80%
of physicians believe that digital health
technologies will revolutionize patient
care within the next five years. With so
many new innovations available to
both doctors and their patients, it’s
important to consider how connected
health solutions can improve outcomes
and reduce costs for everyone
involved.
MedM Inc. has just the right answers
when it comes to the optimum
utilization of connected health
solutions. It is a global expert in
connected health solutions space
covering over 25% of the market and
enabling data collection from hundreds
of Health IoT devices, sensors, and
wearables.
MedM has been recognized as the
Most Flexible Health IoT Device RPM
Software Provider, received The
software solutions to end-users,
developers, and integrators, as well as
caregivers.
Tell us more about the telehealth
solutions that give your company a
distinctive edge to stand out from the
competition?
MedM is uniquely positioned at the
center of the ecosystem: we work
directly with end-users, with device
manufacturers and distributors, and
with RPM providers. From the
consumer market, we learn which new
features to introduce next in our
consumer-facing apps.
We support our vendor partners in
delivering the ultimate user experience
to their clients while allowing the
vendors to focus on what they do best
– hardware. And to our RPM partners,
we bring an expert understanding of
the device market and also the
flexibility of rolling out deployments in
record times (months or even weeks)
and with virtually any sensors they
want.
As a seasoned business leader what
is your opinion on the effects of the
®
Bluetooth Breakthrough Awards, and
became the Winner of Skolkovo
by Cisco I-PRIZE.
In the following interview, Kirill
Filippov, the Founder of MedM
shares a few details about the
company’s journey so far, the current
scenario of the HealthTech space, and
his vision for the company’s future.
Please brief our audience about
MedM, its mission, and the key
aspects of its stronghold within the
HealthTech niche.
MedM is unmatched in its ability to
collect data from a multitude of
consumer medical sensors and channel
it into existing caregiver workflows. As
of 2021, our software seamlessly
integrates with over 550+ medical
devices (and the list keeps constantly
growing).
It is our mission to drive
interoperability in the healthcare
ecosystem, enabling connected health
and improving the speed of
information exchange between all
parties involved. We address both the
B2B and the B2C markets, offering
10 Most Prominent Telehealth Solution Providers In 2021
Redening the HealthTech Industry
through Seamless Innovation
22|December 2021|www.insightscare.com
25. Kirill Filippov
Founder
MedM’s Founder Kirill Filippov has a background in electronics. Years ago, he had a dream of software
being able to complement the new medical hardware that was beginning to be built and accessible to
millions and millions of ordinary people. And with the ever-growing rate of Internet penetration,
healthcare is changing.
To have their blood pressure or sugar measured, people used to have to go see a medical professional
in person, but today, a dozen medical measurements can be accurately made in the home, and instantly
shared with doctors or researchers automatically. Zero clicks involved!
With all this medical data being collected and analyzed, nally, humanity can go from curing diseases to
preventing them. Kirill envisioned MedM as a company that can support humanity on this journey.
The MedM team is made up of brilliant software professionals. Its ‘troops’ are led by CEO Denis Khitrov,
who has taken a few successful software products to market and has been in the Mobile App
development business since Palm was still a thing.
In 2021, MedM
is set on acquiring
dozens of new
B2B customers
and partners,
as well as launching
three new products,
further enhancing
the company’s
central position
in the ecosystem.
“
“
About the leader
23|December 2021|www.insightscare.com
26. pandemic on the healthcare sector,
and what were the challenges that
your company came across?
The effects of Covid-19 are tragic. The
pandemic is both straining Healthcare
to the limit but also pushing it to adapt
and change. We hope that the world
comes out of it stronger, with
healthcare turning more connected,
efficient, and accessible.
With continuous development in
technologies such as AI and ML,
what is your prediction about the
future of the telehealth solutions
niche?
We at MedM believe that the
abundance of medical data to analyze
is at the bottom of progress in
healthcare. For AI and ML to yield
great results we need to start with
plenty of reliable data from hundreds
of millions and even billions of people.
Users also want to exercise control
over their medical data and make the
call: decide if they want to share the
data with researchers, just their doctor
or family, or even keep it offline
altogether.
What would be your advice to the
entrepreneurs and healthcare
enthusiasts aspiring to venture into
telehealth?
I think that as an entrepreneur,
healthcare enthusiasts aspiring to
venture into telehealth need to know
what problem they are solving.
Believing that you can fix a problem
empowers.
How do you envision scaling your
company’s operations and offerings
in 2022?
In 2022 MedM is set on acquiring
dozens of new B2B customers and
partners, as well as launching 3 new
products, further enhancing the
company’s central position in the
ecosystem.
Denis Khitrov
CEO
24|December 2021|www.insightscare.com
28. Indoor
Air Quality -
The Only
True Solution
If you were trying to hang a picture frame and you had
a nail, a hammer, and a screwdriver, would you use the
screwdriver instead of the hammer? Of course, you
wouldn't! If you were in the middle of a pandemic spread
by airborne pathogens, would you prefer to use the most
effective proven tool we've had for over 80 years against
airborne pathogens? Of course, you would! And yet we
haven't been doing much, if anything in most cases, to clean
the air in our environments since the beginning of this
pandemic.
Wait, what? That's right, washing hands, wearing masks,
social distancing, and vaccines are all defensive measures
that do little to nothing to reduce the airborne viral load in
our environments. The Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention (CDC) notes that the most effective thing we
can do against airborne pathogens is to improve our indoor
air quality by eliminating the hazard. They even clearly
note on their website that the three known evidence-based
ways to effectively clean our air are with increased
ventilation, ultraviolet light (UV), or HEPA
(High-Efficiency Particulate Air) filters.
So, then why on earth have we been focused on PPE and
Administrative Controls, which the CDC clearly designates
as the least effective control measures? Perhaps because
those were the easiest, cheapest, and politically expedient
things to deploy rapidly.
While they may not have been effective enough to blunt the
spread of the virus, they did buy us more time to develop
vaccines and therapies. Yet vaccines and therapies also do
nothing to reduce the viral load. Are we continuing to fail to
implement the measures we know can actually end not only
this pandemic but also future ones because of perceived
challenges surrounding the cost, rapid procurement, and
installation of proven equipment to improve indoor air
quality? Could this really be just a tragic miscalculation of
Return on Investment (ROI)?
26|December 2021|www.insightscare.com
29. PJ Piper is the Founder
and CEO of Far UV
Technologies, which has
been developing game-
changing Far UV solutions to
eradicate the pathogens that lead
to infectious disease with NASA,
the Army, and the Air Force since
2016. The company's autonomous
and continuous disinfection
solutions have kept defense
buildings, healthcare facilities,
schools, transit systems, and even
the Pentagon free of transmission
since the pandemic started and
are available now through
National Stock Numbers, the GSA,
and coops almost anywhere. An
entrepreneur with several
successful public and private
financial exits, Mr. Piper, left a
career in investment banking and
financial derivatives, where he
also used risk management
strategies to protect businesses
and enhance return on
investment.
About the Author
Of the three evidence-based solutions the CDC
recommends for clean air, Harvard Medical School has
determined the cost of ultraviolet light solutions is 1/13th
the cost of ventilation and 1/3rd the cost of HEPA filters. At
the same time, ultraviolet provides up to 24 Air Changes
per Hour (ACH), double that recommended by ASHRAE
(the American Society for Heating, Refrigerating and Air-
27|December 2021|www.insightscare.com
30. Conditioning Engineers) for hospital operating rooms and
about 8-12 times more than the newer HVAC (Heating
Ventilation and Air Conditioning) systems in use in most
other buildings today.
Columbia University Medical Center and other academic
colleagues around the world further demonstrated that Far
ultraviolet light, utilizing 222nm wavelengths, can provide
even greater protection of up to 35 ACH in our higher
traffic occupied environments, all within OSHA
(Occupational Safety and Health Administration) guidance.
So, with UV solutions then repeatedly shown to be the most
effective, affordable, and available solutions, let's review
some of the ROIs.
We can't seem to go a week without our favorite sports
team missing players or coaches to COVID protocols. The
potentially avoidable cost to these teams is astronomical.
With the average cost of a win in the NFL exceeding $20
million in players' salaries alone and the cost of UV
installation throughout the locker, weight, meeting rooms,
and more being less than a single player's game check, the
ROI can easily be several thousand percent for any given
game let alone sustaining that competitive advantage
throughout the season and playoffs. And that competitive
advantage and ROI are not only for professional sports.
Ask any collegiate booster what it might be worth to them
to significantly improve the probability that their team
could be at full strength for key matchups. These are
solutions they could literally obtain next week!
The amortized cost of the UV can be about 1/50th the daily
cost of hiring a minimum wage employee to wipe down
tables, and substantially more effective given those table
washers wouldn't be cleaning the air at all. Similarly,
keeping even a minimum wage employee from having to
isolate or quarantine provides a comparable outsized return
for a business. The return only becomes more pronounced
when the impacted employee is getting paid six or seven
figures as a highly paid medical, legal, finance, or other
professional.
While the ROI is clearly staggering to protect our
businesses, the return is actually infinite in our K-12
schools, where they can spend as little as 15% of their
already allocated but largely unspent COVID ESSER
(Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief)
funding to protect our kids and their teachers.
Beyond the 28 million extra years of life estimated to be
lost in 2020 and the likelihood that these estimates will be
increasing in each of 2021 and 2022, the financial cost of
the pandemic have easily been well over a trillion dollars
and counting. And yet here we are today, with clear
guidance as to the preferred economic, humanitarian,
environmental, and political solution in plain sight,
mandating less effective countermeasures. One could argue
this is easily the greatest Return on Investment opportunity
in history, one that could make the world a profoundly
better place and one that everyone could support.
While this seemingly no-brainer Far UV solution may have
fallen through the cracks somewhat given limited
awareness at the onset of the pandemic, after almost two
years, many have decided that they are just going to move
on with their lives, even if potentially dangerous new
variants emerge.
COVID fatigue is simply lowering our guard as the
perceived risk-reward shifts with an assumption that the
vaccines will at least reduce the chances of severe disease.
However, would you rather live in a world where you, your
families, or your communities get an unknown variant of
COVID and hope for mild symptoms without long-lasting
impacts, or would you rather still just not get COVID?
Fortunately, there is a continuous and passive technology
that can provide the protection we need without many of the
personal sacrifices that we have been making.
The battle against COVID has been one of constant
adaptation. The virus will continue to circulate and mutate
into new forms and will keep finding ways to evade our
vaccines to infect or reinfect us until we implement a
solution that's always working and pathogen agnostic.
Fortunately, that solution is already here. Far UV light kills
or inactivates the pathogens in the air and on the surfaces
all around us regardless of which Greek letter they are
assigned. It doesn't matter if it's the common cold and flu,
foodborne illnesses, hospital-acquired infections, or mold;
this technology should immediately change the way we
think about disease preparedness and prevention now and
forever.
CXO's, Boards of Directors, investors, employees, unions,
service members, patients, parents, voters, sports fans,
tenants, and anyone else whose business, family, friends, or
communities occupy buildings or vehicles with other
people should demand these readily available, highly
effective and high ROI solutions Improve Indoor Air
Quality now.
28|December 2021|www.insightscare.com
32. Importance
Corporate Wellness
The health of the employees impacts their working
possibilities. According to the research, healthy
employees are more productive, happier, less
stressed, and work with increased morale. Eventually, such
factors can lead to the success of the company. This
situation can be vice-versa if the employees are facing
stress-related problems. Companies or businesses can use
corporate wellness programs as an effective solution to
solve these problems.
Companies can provide employees with tools, social
support, and strategies to maintain a stress-free living
environment and maximize the stress management scenario
with these wellness programs. Recent developments point
towards more than 70 percent of employers or business
owners offering corporate wellness programs. Research has
proven that these programs are beneficial for the employees
and the employers as well, promoting a healthier
workplace.
The corporate wellness programs impact the development
of employees and the creation of a healthier workplace with
these benefits:
Ÿ Increasing the productivity
The leading causes of low productivity are stress and poor
health. When employees are stressed out, or they are
unwell, they can feel exhausted and less motivated to work.
If the company is adopting a wellness program for such
employees, it is going to help them to adopt healthy habits
with stress management and regular exercise.
Eventually, it can help the employees to feel motivated
towards their work and construct positive thoughts about
the same. Wellness programs provide activities that can
increase productivity and performance, leading the
employees to work in a focused and motivated manner to
execute the assigned tasks.
Ÿ Adopt the healthy behavior
A significant benefit of introducing the wellness program in
the workplace is that it can help the employees to improve
their mental and physical health. A well-curated wellness
program can help and guide the employees to maintain
healthy habits from their diet to proper exercise with a
regular routine. As the employees are getting educated
about health and wellness, they can maintain an excellent
work surrounding and reduce the risk of health problems
that are caused because of the stress.
Ÿ Increasing employee engagement
Corporate wellness programs can help employers to
establish a wellness culture, creating an engaged and work-
focused environment, where employees will consider that
good health is beneficial towards their careers. It will also
develop an interest in organizing group activities such as
fitness challenges, walk meetings, and tasks where
employees can establish effective communication among
themselves and form friendly surroundings within the
company.
Additionally, the wellness program can also benefit and
engage employees outside the workplace as well. This can
be a good advantage as it will create a positive impact with
this social connection among the employees and they can
have a comfortable time while working with the company.
Ÿ Reducing stress with effective stress management
methods
Many employees can face stressful situations while
executing their assigned tasks, and stress can cause errors or
reduced productivity. Stress can even cause severe health
problems, and if any company or business plans to execute
their operations smoothly, they should focus on their
employees and stress management.
30|December 2021|www.insightscare.com
33. In the wellness programs, the employees
and employers are assisted by the experts in
their stress management sessions to learn and
maintain their thought processes in stressful
situations. In these sessions, they are also introduced to
the methods which are essential towards stress
management, leading to reduce the stress and improve their
performance significantly.
When staff is less stressed, they can completely focus on
their work and properly execute the tasks, also enhancing
their working abilities.
Ÿ Improving the employee retention
Corporate wellness programs have a
positive impact on employee retention.
These programs not only help to manage stress but
also focus on health and maintaining healthy habits.
Successful programs help to create a work and friendly
environment altogether, leading the employees to stay
healthy and happy in their jobs. As a result, employees
develop abilities to improvise their working skills, which
effectively increases the performance of the employees and
the company. Successful programs highlight the importance
of employee wellbeing, indicating that the company is
forward-thinking and is concerned about their employees’
issues about health and stress management.
Through the wellness programs, the employees feel like an
asset for the company, which can create a friendly
relationship between the employee and the company; they
are less likely to leave and seek a job elsewhere.
Workplace reimagined
With the wellness programs, it is the organization and the
employees who are maintaining a loyal connection together.
Implementing wellness programs can create a strategic
advantage to boost productivity, working abilities, stress
management and create a work-friendly environment
altogether.
Such a working atmosphere creates interaction, promotes
healthy, long-lasting positive behaviors among the
employees, and enhances their commitment to their work
output.
-Abhishek Joshi
31|December 2021|www.insightscare.com
34. Telehealth is one of the
healthcare services that has
skyrocketed during the
COVID-19 pandemic. Initiated with
the motive of providing easy care at
home, telehealth services worked
wonders during the pandemic-induced
isolation period and helped contain the
virus among the community.
Humans benefitted substantially
through telehealth services during one
of the most difficult times in human
civilization and now that has extended
to our beloved pets as well.
Pawp is a veterinary telehealth
platform based out of New York, which
is revolutionizing the telehealth space
by introducing pet care to the arena.
Celebrating its first anniversary in
September 2021, Pawp has already
been named as the ‘Most Innovative
Petcare Company’ in the 2020
BestMoney Awards.
While interviewing Marc Atiyeh, the
CEO, and Founder of Pawp Inc.,
about the vision behind setting up the
company, he said, “We founded Pawp
to democratize pet care. Our approach
is uniquely attractive to pet parents,
offering one affordable plan that covers
every dog and cat in the family. Our
first-of-its-kind solution marries the
power and accessibility of 24/7
telehealth with the guarantee of
Revolutionizing Pet-Care Through Telehealth Services
Marc Atiyeh
CEO and Founder
32|December 2021|www.insightscare.com
35. Our ultimate goal is
to make quality vet
care, and the means
to pay for it,
accessible to
everyone and we’ll
always find new
ways to make that
goal possible.
financial security, providing pet parents
with some well-deserved peace of
mind.”
Read ahead to receive more insights
into how Pawp is changing the pet-care
landscape.
Please brief our audience about
Pawp, its mission, and the key
aspects of its stronghold within the
HealthTech niche.
Pawp’s ultimate goal is to help pet
parents become more educated,
equipped, and financially empowered
to take the best possible care of their
dogs and cats.
Currently, Pawp is the ONLY company
offering on-demand telehealth via a
24/7 digital vet clinic and a $3,000
annual emergency fund so pet owners
are never forced to make healthcare
decisions for their pets based on
accessibility or financial restraints.
Pawp’s mission is to make pet care
affordable to everyone so that families
can have peace of mind.
Tell us more about the telehealth
solutions that give Pawp a distinctive
edge to stand out from the
competition?
Pawp is the first-of-its-kind veterinary
telehealth platform that helps pet
owners across the country by offering
access to quality care and providing
help to pay for it. Its 24/7 digital clinic
is on-demand, meaning you can text,
call, or video chat with a veterinarian
any time of the day or night within
minutes — no appointment required.
Pawp members can ask medical
questions as well as many other topics
like behavior and nutrition. Pawp is
also available 24/7 in case of an
emergency.
If your pet were to experience a life-
threatening emergency, Pawp also
offers a $3,000 safety net for an
emergency vet bill paid directly to the
clinic, making it an affordable
alternative to pet insurance. By
increasing access to vets and helping to
pay for them, Pawp uniquely addresses
two of the largest pain points pet
parents in the U.S. face today. One
Pawp plan can also be used on up to 6
pets in one household at no additional
cost.
As a seasoned business leader, what
is your opinion on the effects of the
pandemic on the healthcare sector,
and what were the challenges that
Pawp came across?
Many healthcare businesses and
providers had to pivot and endured
many changes as a result of the
pandemic. One of the more welcome
changes has been the rise of telehealth
services. Humans have greatly
benefited from the widespread
emergence of telehealth and Pawp was
perfectly positioned to leverage this
familiarity and pioneer a new category
for pets. We at Pawp believe that
access to affordable, quality healthcare
should be a rite of passage for pets and
their parents.
Pioneering a new category comes with
all sorts of surprises, but the company
has experienced incredible growth in a
relatively volatile period. The
pandemic taught us to stay nimble and
to adapt to circumstances so that we’re
constantly iterating on our product and
making it the best it can be.
With continuous development in
technologies such as AI and ML,
what is your prediction about the
future of the telehealth solutions
niche?
Practicing telemedicine 20-30 years
ago seems like something out of the
Jetsons. And telemedicine for pets?
Almost inconceivable. We are iterating
at such a breakneck pace that it’s hard
to imagine just how much could
theoretically be possible in 5, 10, or
even 20 years.
The expectation is constant
improvement. The digital clinic
experience can only get better,
enabling us to treat our pets from the
comfort of our homes, knowing they’ll
be just fine. We can already do so
much, it’s exciting to think of the
future. That’s why we’re investing
heavily in our engineering teams so
that we can continue to leverage
thoughtful technology to both improve
and extend our pets’ lives.
What would be your advice to the
entrepreneurs and healthcare
enthusiasts aspiring to venture into
telehealth?
Telehealth is a great field to be in,
especially post-pandemic. It’s also high
impact and advances generally
improve the world around us, which is
as exciting as it is fulfilling. My advice
10 Most Prominent Telehealth Solution Providers In 2021
33|December 2021|www.insightscare.com
36. Pawp’s mission is
to make pet care
affordable to
everyone so that
families can have
peace of mind.
to any aspiring entrepreneur is to stay
agile and to stay hungry.
When a field is up and coming, it’s
competitive. It’s not about being the
first or the loudest, it’s about being the
best. Make sure you have a product
you believe in. Make sure you can
make a case for it. If you can’t
convince yourself, you’re not going to
convince anyone.
How do you envision scaling Pawp’s
operations and offerings?
Our goal is to always provide the most
comprehensive care for your pet as
possible and we know that definition
will expand constantly. We as a
company are driven by growth on
every front: we’re always hiring,
always looking for the next
optimization or new tool that can make
the product better.
Pawp wants to make quality vet care,
and the means to pay for it, accessible
to everyone and we’ll always find new
ways to make that goal possible. Since
our launch in September of 2020, we
have already seen revenue growth of
5x in the first half of 2021 with
projections to more than double by
year’s end.
About the Leader
Before starting Pawp, Marc served as
Chief Strategy Officer at Clarity
Money (acquired by Goldman Sachs)
where he focused on growth efforts
including user acquisition, operations,
partnerships, and marketing.
Prior to Clarity Money, Marc served as
the Head of Growth at Paribus where
he oversaw the growth of the company
from 10,000 users to almost 1,000,000
in just 12 months, until Paribus was
acquired by Capital One. Marc has also
been involved in other industries
including both ad-tech and venture
capital. He’s currently an advisor for
Nuvocargo and Cushion.ai.
A graduate of Harvard College, Marc
earned his degree in Electrical and
Computer Engineering. He graduated
High School from College Notre-Dame
de Jamhour in Beirut, Lebanon where
he received the French Baccalaureate
with the highest honors.
As a pet parent himself (a full-time dog
dad to Chelsea, a Yorkie, and Fluf, a
Chow Chow), Marc knows that access
to vets and information you can trust
can make a real difference on a pet’s
health, and that pet emergencies often
happen outside of office hours.
He started Pawp to make sure every
pet has 24/7 access to quality vet care
as well as help paying for it. Knowing
how much his dogs mean to him, it’s
incredibly important that Pawp realizes
its mission in making sure no pet
parent has to choose between paying a
vet bill and saving their best friend’s
life.
Marc Atiyeh with Co-Founder, Andrew Malek
34|December 2021|www.insightscare.com
38. Providing Simplified and Seamless Telehealth Solutions
People choose
us because we
offer a
seamlessness
and
frictionless
experience for
all
stakeholders.
Dr. Keith Dressler
D.D.S., M.S.D.,
Chairman and CEO
36|December 2021|www.insightscare.com
39. Artificial intelligence and virtual
care are changing the
healthcare industry for the
better. Just a few years ago, nobody
would have thought about treating
patients via telephonic calls or video
chats—the COVID-19 pandemic being
the source of this change.
Telehealth now plays an important role
in shaping how people have access to
quality healthcare. Thanks to
companies like Rhinogram, patients
can now receive medical attention
from wherever they are. Dr. Keith
Dressler, the Chairman and CEO of
Rhinogram believes that this blend in
technology and healthcare will only
bring ease and betterment to the
telehealth industry.
In the following interview, Dr.
Dressler, shares valuable insights into
the company’s operations, the current
industry landscape, his vision for the
achieving the company’s vision and
mission.
Please brief our audience about your
company, its mission, and the key
aspects of its stronghold within the
health-Tech niche.
Based in Chattanooga, Tenn.,
Rhinogram is a leading cloud-based,
HIPAA-compliant virtual care platform
– connecting patients, clinicians, and
office administrators through
confidential, text-based and video
interactions in real time.
The virtual care platform, which
supports multimedia messaging and
Facebook messenger communication,
seamlessly integrates with most EHR
and PMS systems, synchronizing
secure, encrypted patient
communication into clinical
workflows.
With Rhinogram, providers can better
engage with their patients by
streamlining administrative processes,
managing pre- and post-procedure
care, and reducing unnecessary
appointments to realize value-based
care success and deliver a quality
experience that drives patient loyalty.
Tell us more about the telehealth
solutions that give your company a
distinctive edge to stand out from the
competition?
Virtual care and remote patient
engagement are essential, now more
than ever. The Covid-19 pandemic
prompted patients and providers to
understand the benefit and necessity of
virtual care platforms and use them for
triage, procedure follow-ups, simple
diagnoses, medication-related advice,
behavioural health visits, and more.
We at Rhinogram enable providers to
communicate with patients securely
and safely via text-based and video
interactions at any time from their
mobile device to address appointment
requests, clinical questions, refill
requests, medical records access, and
more. Through the integration of e-
forms and signatures with us, providers
can create and send forms via text to
patients.
In turn, patients will be able to securely
view, sign and submit these forms right
on their phones or other mobile
devices, which are then digitally stored
in their patient profile. The availability
of live video calls within our platform
enables providers to deliver virtual
visits without patients having to
download an app or log into a portal.
Our virtual care platform gives
providers several options for
contactless care and extends care to
patients with limited access, such as
those living in rural communities. The
platform seamlessly integrates with
most EHR and PMS systems,
synchronizing secure, and encrypted
patient communication into clinical
workflows.
It also includes a quick message-triage
to appropriate team members, allowing
the scheduling team to handle
appointments, billing staff to field
financial and insurance queries, and
freeing clinical team members to
address care concerns.
As a seasoned business leader what
is your opinion on the effects of the
pandemic on the healthcare sector,
and what were the challenges that
company came across?
The global pandemic accomplished
something many in the healthcare
sector had despaired of – it pushed
providers to quickly adopt new
technology like virtual care platforms,
which gained a lot of traction with
providers because they greatly benefit
both the practice and the patient.
For providers, it was a valuable
resource to help keep their doors open
and remain profitable. For patients,
virtual care allowed them to receive
care in the most appropriate and safest
manner possible.
As a result, I believe virtual care is
here to stay and we will see practices
beginning to hybridize the way they
deliver care. As practices navigate the
changing healthcare landscape and
look toward the next phases of in-
person and virtual healthcare, it is clear
that virtual care platforms can provide
exactly the type of hybridized support
they need.
The reality is that many patients would
be much better served with virtual
wellness checks, quick text-based
check-ins, and even symptom
monitoring via laptop or mobile
device. For example, those living in
rural areas may have very limited
broadband access. This restricts their
ability to engage in video tele consults
or even log into an EHR portal.
Not to mention, many patients with co-
morbidities reside in these and other
10 Most Prominent Telehealth Solution Providers In 2021
37|December 2021|www.insightscare.com
40. underserved communities. Virtual care
platforms have an advantage here,
relying on widely available cell service
rather than broadband. This allows for
high-risk patients to remain home
during the pandemic.
In the end, I believe the pandemic sped
up the learning curve when it comes to
hybrid care with the realization that it
is better, more profitable, and more
convenient for all involved. My one
piece of advice for those looking to
adopt this technology would be to
ensure you have adopted a HIPAA-
compliant platform. Early in the
pandemic, the Office for Civil Rights
(OCR) at the U.S Department of
Health and Human Service recognized
the importance of interoperability
during the pandemic and announced
that it would lift penalties around
telehealth use during the Covid-19
pandemic. So, some non-compliant
platforms are in play.
With continuous development in
technologies such as AI and ML,
what is your prediction about the
future of the telehealth solutions
niche?
With AI and machine learning, we’re
looking at a more streamlined and
seamless way of communication
between patient and provider. AI, for
example, will allow a provider to
receive data – intelligent data – from
home devices with remote patient
monitoring. Now, a provider can
monitor their patients and triage things
quickly and easily.
Integrating AI and ML technology into
a virtual care platform will enable the
platform to understand what normal
looks like and what abnormal looks
like. Clinicians will then be alerted to
abnormalities, which in turn can be
triaged quickly so care can be
provided, and better outcomes
achieved. Therefore, I believe the
future of virtual care systems will
integrate symptom checking and
remote vital-sign collection such as
blood pressure, oxygen level, and A1C
level, some without the need for
additional devices like a blood pressure
cuff.
Medical apps can also be integrated
with some platforms, allowing
clinicians to more closely monitor both
acute- and chronic-care patients. AI
allows providers to deliver more care
to more people in a higher quality way.
As for Rhinogram today, we have
shifted the healthcare communication
paradigm from voice answering
machine dominated to a text messaging
paradigm. We are looking to integrate
AI and ML into our solution in 2022,
which will enable incoming text
messages to be read, interpreted, and
then automatically routed to the right
internal teams.
In essence, AI will allow for smart
routing with conversation intelligence.
But it does require human intervention,
which I don’t believe will totally
disappear. What AI and ML will do is
take away more tasks that can and
should easily be automated as the
paradigm shift continues and text
messages become the dominate form
of communication.
What would be your advice to the
entrepreneurs and healthcare
enthusiasts aspiring to venture into
telehealth?
As an entrepreneur myself, I firmly
believe virtual care is the new frontier
for healthcare. My advice for those
looking to get into the virtual care
technology game would be to make
sure whatever you develop can be
easily integrated into all the other great
solutions that are out there because you
are not going to be able to conquer the
entire frontier with one solution.
That is why the question keeping any
virtual care entrepreneur awake at
night should be ‘can my new
technology easily integrate with other
health IT platforms used by providers’.
Knowing Rhinogram easily integrates
with existing remote patient
monitoring platforms or EHRs, allows
us to be the engine that drives the
communication for providers as we
have so many features already built
into our comprehensive virtual care
platform. There’s no need to reinvent
those wheels!
How do you envision on scaling your
company’s operations and offerings
in 2021?
We are continuing to look at ways to
enhance our existing feature set that
currently serves 36 different healthcare
verticals. Our virtual care platform
provides robust support to any medical
specialty, from internal medicine
practices managing a large patient
population to specialists, looking for a
way to better serve remote areas to
behavioral health practices seeking to
streamline frequent patient check-ins.
38|December 2021|www.insightscare.com
41. We are constantly learning what
these verticals need as well as
the enhancements to existing
feature sets that they would like
to have built-in to the platform.
A functionality that I would say
is one we would like to add is
more automation, which I
mentioned earlier when talking
about AI workflows. At this
stage, automation is critical to
how we plan to scale and grow
Rhinogram.
Another way we continuously
look to scale our virtual care
offering is to partner with those
verticals that are currently using
bidirectional text communication in a
limited form. Instead of considering
changing the entire communication
paradigm, they are using bidirectional
texting to add work to their staff’s
plates rather than lessen administrative
tasks. Their thinking is ‘if you cannot
get the patient by phone or by email,
then text them’.
That goes back to resisting the
paradigm shift from a phone
dominated communication practice to a
text dominated one. Over the next five
years, providers will truly come to
understand how important patient-
initiated texting is as a means of
providing a frictionless and convenient
patient experience.
We have only just begun to scratch the
surface and I still think we are in the
pre-early adopter phase of a text
dominated virtual care platform.
Educating providers is key to moving
that forward, particularly with those
who have experience using a virtual
care platform with limited bidirectional
texting who then realize they need
more from their platform.
And that's when they come searching
for Rhinogram because we have more
experience and knowledge gathered
over the past five years that no other
company has about how patient
initiated communications work, what
patient and provider demands are when
it comes to communication, and most
importantly, we know the technology
that drives this need in a secure and
compliant way.
About the leader:
Dr. Keith Dressler can best be described as a compassionate,
philanthropic, and extremely dedicated person who unconditionally cares
about his patients, his staff, and his community. With more than 35 years
of experience in orthodontics and entrepreneurship, Dr. Dressler loves
interacting with his patients in a positive and encouraging way and
strives to give every family an exceptional patient experience every time.
With a longstanding generational background in healthcare, Dr. Dressler
understood the needs of both the patient who was looking for a
convenient and secure way to interact with their provider, and that of the
provider who wanted to ensure they were doing so in compliance with
HIPAA regulations. To help address this need, Dr. Dressler built a solution
to modernize communication across all of healthcare from enterprise, all
the way down to the individual practitioner.
With Rhinogram, all barriers between the patient and the provider are
removed so that patients can simply communicate with their provider. For
Dr. Dressler, this meant developing a virtual care solution that offers
multimodality communications which supports bidirectional messages
that engage patients in their preferred manner including secure text
messaging, PDFs, images, video conferencing and social media access.
A serial entrepreneur, in 2000 he co-founded OrthoBanc, LLC, a payment
solutions management company currently serving 4,000+ healthcare
providers. In 2020, he successfully sold OrthoBanc to OrthoFi.
Exhibiting Excellence
Following are the awards that
Rhinogram has won:
Co. Lab 2020 High Growth
Business of the Year
Co. Lab 2020 Startup of the Year
Becker’s Healthcare 102 Women
in Health IT to Know | 2019
Becker’s Hospital Review
Telehealth companies to know |
2019 and Telehealth companies
to know | 2020
CityScope Magazine’s 8
Companies to Watch in 2021
39|December 2021|www.insightscare.com