Video consultations - is more data available?
On the whole I find video consultations add little value over a phone call in most cases. However they might be really useful if I (as the consulting doctor) received (with permission) other information along side the video image.
There are perhaps two parts to this:
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Live data from the video stream - I’ve seen several apps that can detect physical parameters like heart rate/temp from the video image. These would be cool and I’ve mentioned them before. I suspect the developers of this tech need to license it to others for its mainstream use.
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Equally useful would be information perhaps gleaned from the users phone prior to the call. Some demographic e.g. up to date contact details, emergency contact details, allergies, location and any recent readings from attached devices e.g. BP machines blood glucose pulse ox etc. If all users attached medical devices recorded their data into Healthkit or its android equivalent - why cant Healthkit send me some of that data as “metadata” along side the video image? or perhaps just send it on direct request. Perhaps even better might be the ability to send a questionnaire or similar to be filled in prior to the call.
Any thoughts on if this is possible? At the moment we seem to send a link that opens up in a browser - could data be sent that I could receive? I think it would really push the sales of devices that write to something like Healthkit if the data was sharable - of course, a commenter will no doubt tell me this already exists!
Even the ability to ping a patient and receive back some of the data stored in their Health app - to be filled in their records might be useful.