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Patient Record Disconnect

The last thing a patient needs when they are sick, is to have to scurry around and collect their medical records from the various providers who generated the patient’s medical records. Often these records can help to understand a disease progression that is critical for the patient’s treatment plan. But patient records often reside at various providers who store these in proprietary, incompatible and disconnected silos, often requiring the patient show up in person to receive a CD or printed paper copy. Without these records in hand, a patient’s diagnosis can be incorrect or incomplete. Expensive and sometimes uncomfortable tests may have to be performed again.

We are all feeling the impact of COVID-19 on our lives as well as on our professions. Medical imaging practices are similarly being impacted. Unfortunately, much of the affect of this disease will have long-standing implications that will linger far beyond the containment of COVID-19. In order to survive and perhaps even grow in the new reality, imaging practices will need to make drastic adjustments in how they operate.

More than two million COVID-19 cases have been recorded and more than 100,000 people have died in Latin America according to the European Centre for Disease Control and Prevention. When it comes to healthcare, workers continue to man the front lines and do their best to serve their patients.

When COVID-19 first struck, Purview sprang into action. We offered one of our products, software for remote diagnostic image viewing, free of charge for healthcare workers around the globe. But healthcare goes beyond traditional doctors and patients, and for Purview this also includes forensics and veterinarians.

In Latin America, two of the organizations that adopted Purview Image during the pandemic were Abanimal Imágenes Diagnósticas in Bogatá, Columbia and Instituto de Radiología in São Paulo, Brazil.

If you are licensed in a subspecialty, there is a strong likelihood that someone is seeking your opinion.  You won’t be surprised to hear that some subspecialties like Oncology, Cardiology and Neurology are always in demand. But plenty of others, including: dentistry, Orthopedics, ENT’s OBGYNs and others, are also finding demand for their services. You may be under the impression that this is a difficult and costly service to begin offering, but that just simply is not the case.

The trend had already begun, but the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic has kicked it into overdrive.

Subspecialists are adopting telemedicine technology to provide their expertise to patients they never even meet. Sound exotic? It’s not. The Washington Post projects over 1 billion telehealth visits by the end of 2020. Subspecialists are finding a growing opportunity to expand their domain to patients who otherwise might not have this specialization available to them.