On the Global Telehealth Exchange
On July 24, Solve.Care CEO Pradeep Goel set aside time to articulate the development of the Global Telehealth Exchange. A few of the things discussed were of especial importance. First, the upcoming GTHE Q4 release will be much more advanced than the current model. Second, Pradeep emphasized the general sense of excitement the GTHE has generated within the medical community. In fact, some of the newly incorporated features are there at the behest of physicians themselves. What follows is a comprehensive coverage of the update. The presentation itself is available here.
1. Global Matching
The Global Telehealth Exchange (GTHE) is intrinsically different from other telehealth services in that it is not just an extension of existing doctor-patient relationships, nor is it simply a replacement for an in-person visit with an online consultation. The GTHE opens new relationships by effectively matching doctors and patients worldwide, based on parameters and criteria they themselves set, relationships that were previously unavailable or impracticable prior to GTHE. What GTHE does is unlock a global “liquidity” for the healthcare market, ensuring that both healthcare buyers and sellers can get the best value in accordance with their own preferences.
2. Fundamental Capabilities
The fundamental capabilities of the GTHE are: instant appointments; real-time tele-sessions; safe record sharing; real-time referral management; real-time payments; the ability to do care continuity through HAYFT and other Care.Cards; and a lot more to come.
3. GTHE ID Makes Doctors Hyper-Efficient
The GTHE ID provides the value of an entire administrative staff, working 24/7, by:
- 3.1 Automating administrative functions like managing a calendar of appointments, record-keeping, billing & payments, reminders & notification, etc.
- 3.2 Serving as the physician’s verified identity for inquiries about credentials, eligibility, availability, rates, and other criteria.
- 3.3 Allowing physicians to receive secure and auditable payments, without sharing banking information.
With a GTHE ID, doctors can focus on the actual practice of medicine.
4. Specialist and Concierge Care Services
The GTHE is being developed with the active participation of, testing by, and feedback from doctors. There is heavy demand for a platform that is not just for primary care through teleconsultations, but also for specialist and concierge care, with full care episode management. This allows a wider range of specialists like surgeons and doctors who are chiefly involved in long-term care management to offer the entire process of (for example) planning, performing the surgery, doing follow ups and care continuity, and to do all of these and get paid for such full care episodes by utilizing the GTHE platform. This also further optimizes work efficiency, time utilization, and revenue of health specialists. Developing the product together with the users helps make sure that it truly serves their needs, and the inclusion of the concierge care service speaks to that and sets the Global Telehealth Exchange leagues apart from other telehealth offerings.
5. Why Doctors are Interested
There is interest from physicians from all over the world. Why? With the GTHE ID, doctors are granted automated appointments, automated billing, automated instant payments, and can customize the revenue parameter (i.e. decide how much to charge, etc.) and the visibility parameter (select time availability, accept patients from all over the world or only from selected areas). On the Global Telehealth Exchange, doctors enjoy better work-life balance, more effective use of their time, and they get to practice medicine the way they want to, with whomever they want.
6. Cost Based on Revenue
Another big differentiator is that on the GTHE, cost is based on revenue. This means that the doctor pays the platform based on his/her GTHE revenue, and not a fixed charge like in other telehealth services. This again plays to the flexibility afforded to physicians by GTHE as they no longer need to chase work just to ensure profit or to cover a fee they are contractually obliged to pay.
7. Benefits to Patients
On the other side, patients have global access to care, quick access to a second opinion or a third if so desired, immediate appointments, total cost transparency, ease-of-use, and 100% control over data.
8. Bringing Freedom to Healthcare
For both the physician and the patient, their use of the platform is determined by their choice and not by some predetermined model of care externally imposed. Freedom is what the GTHE is bringing to market.
9. Peer-to-Peer Healthcare Network
The GTHE has a peer-to-peer structure where every participant can be seen as a node in a global healthcare network, and each node can talk to any other. This allows (by way of example) a doctor to easily connect his node to a specialty care physician in order to either give or receive referrals or do care continuity in collaboration with that physician. Similarly, a patient can create a Care.Circle with family members who might help them subsidize the cost of treatment or keep track of prescriptions. What this structure also does is it allows for matching and for real-time transactions to happen with minimal effort on the part of the participants, and this is the value proposition that GTHE gives to both patients and doctors.
10. SOLVE Token Utilization
The fundamental model of simply providing for teleconsultations already gives very compelling token usage. Another model for full care episodes through specialist and concierge care services is not only highly demanded by physicians, but also potentialy brings 5x more usage to the SOLVE token. The teleconsultation model and the specialist/concierge telecare management model are by no means mutually exclusive. In fact, both will be available on GTHE and both would take place simultaneously; that garners massive utility to the token.
11. Credentialing Verification Model
Essential to patient-provider matching is this three-tier view of the physician:
- 11.1 License verification
- 11.2 GTHE peer review rating system
- 11.3 Primary source verification
Not all physicians need every credentialing verification level; only the license verification is mandatory. Even so, having the other levels allows GTHE patients worldwide to define the criteria of the match, and gives them more certainty about the provider with whom they would be consulting. There is no global credentialing verification system today. The GTHE is the first to do it, and this is a massively complex and massively valuable undertaking. It allows Solve.Care to enforce quality, and to automate the operations of the doctors and the patients. Solve.Care is building out this global credentialing verification system fully aware that its impact will go beyond GTHE. It will also change the way insurance companies, government agencies, provider networks, hospital systems, and medical universities automate and conduct their due diligence. In itself, this is going to be a valuable use case for Solve.Care and the SOLVE token because a non-patient accessing these credentials in GTHE IDs (in a B2B context, for example) can result in the SOLVE token being utilized to provide access, both in terms of control and cost.
12. GTHE as a Global Payment System
Payments are all in SOLVE token and happen in the Care.Wallet. For physicians, this translates to no billing, no collection, and no bureaucracy. They don’t need to deal with crypto price volatility as that is already taken care of on the GTHE back-end. For patients, this translates to an easy, real-time, and transparent payment experience. Neither side needs to share bank account information with the other party. Solve.Care plans to allow third-party telehealth solution providers to piggyback on GTHE as a global payment solution.
13. Solve.Care as an Exchange of Telehealth Providers
Having other telehealth solutions leverage GTHE IDs as a payment gateway, and having them leverage GTHE IDs as an administrative interface through which physician credentials can be accessed, would effectively make Solve.Care an exchange of telehealth solutions. The idea is to move, step by step, from the notion that the SOLVE token is essential to the GTHE platform to the notion that it is tied to the GTHE ID, which GTHE uses, and other telehealth providers can as well. So a patient may book an appointment using a different telehealth platform and still end up using the SOLVE token. The ultimate goal is to create a global healthcare payment currency in SOLVE tokens.
14. Focus Markets
The highest healthcare provider interest for the GTHE is coming from the U.S., followed by India. Interestingly, the United States has the highest healthcare cost per patient in the world, and though healthcare expenditure per patient is a lot lower in India, it tallies 4.4 billion healthcare visits per year, which is a lot higher than the American equivalent. These are the two countries where GTHE is getting the most traction with the most physician sign ups. The GTHE is getting interest from other parts of the world for active practice, but also as a vehicle for referrals and second opinions.
15. The SOLVE Token Makes It All Happen
Solve.Care has secured fiat pairs for the SOLVE token, like USD/SOLVE, EUR/SOLVE, AUD/SOLVE, and VND/SOLVE. This brings transparent pricing to the patient and the doctor as it is easier for non-crypto users to find conversion rates between fiat currencies. So having more fiat pairs is good, and effort will continue to be exerted to achieve that. Access to the token for the crypto community is also being expanded. But the key element is very simple: people who are not familiar with crypto can easily use the Care.Wallet, make an appointment, pay for it using SOLVE token. The process is made incredibly simple for them. Patients just need to know the price and pay it; they don’t have to deal with hidden fees, hidden conversion costs, and all the rest that one may experience when dealing with crypto. On the Global Telehealth Exchange, crypto empowers users, it doesn’t limit them.
16. Ambassador Program
The Ambassador Program was initiated with the expectation that insurance brokers, care coordinators, office administrators, etc., would apply as ambassadors. But interestingly enough, almost all of those who signed up as ambassadors are physicians themselves. The message is that not only do physicians want to use the GTHE, they also want colleagues to join the Global Telehealth Exchange. The Ambassador Program Roundtable resulted in 900+ event registrations; of which most were physicians. These physician ambassadors are also involved in the design of the platform. They are actively saying what they want on GTHE, and their feedback has been instrumental in understanding the need to expand the scope of the platform and to add the specialist and concierge care services, among other features. Solve.Care is so excited by these developments that the dedicated provider relations team will be expanded. This team’s sole purpose is to support the ambassadors and physicians in using, adopting, and promoting GTHE around the world. The focus is on onboarding and supporting both individual doctors and whole physician networks. The GTHE is shaping up to be numbered among the few physician-centric platforms, and probably the only one where doctors have a voice in how it is developed and how it will operate.
17. Launch Status
The original launch plan for the GTHE was scheduled on August 1, 2020, which would have standard telehealth services, provider registry, appointments, telehealth sessions, and payments. Physicians are also asking for Care.Groups, total episode payments, EMR data interfaces, specialty care model, full care continuity. In view of the expanded scope of the GTHE, the estimated launch is now scheduled for Q4 2020.
