Back in the day, if you were too sick to get out of bed, you called your family doctor. Back then, doctors made house calls. But that was before medicine was ruled by insurance and the government. Nowadays, lots of luck. But like so much else, there’s now an app for that. Kalldoc is the brainchild of Dr. Michael Baker, a British PhD, who is not himself an MD.
Kalldoc is starting to roll out in California. Baker is hoping to have it available nationwide by the end of the year. He says Kalldoc is actually offering two services:
Currently, we’re rolling out the telemedicine version, and for that you simply tap on an icon on either a smartphone or tablet or on a dedicated panel. We’re now introducing, just about launched, dedicated panels where you put them on the wall or on the mantelpiece and all you do is tap them and, within a few seconds, a doctor appears on the screen. Our system routes it through to an available doctor.
Baker says the system will work as a smartphone app, or through its own hardware tablet. The Android version is already available, and he expects the iOS version will be in the Apple Store within the next few weeks. Baker explained the reasons for the proprietary tablet, which costs roughly $100:
For the millennial user, it’s very obvious to use your iPhone. For the person who doesn’t regularly use a tablet or iPhone, this is something that an older user can have installed by the caregiver or by the children in the house so that grandma can always get to talk to the doctor. So it can be proprietary hardware in that it’s set up to do this job and so it becomes very easy to use in that tapping the screen allows the doctor to come up.
Baker says the doctors will set their own fees for these telemedicine calls, but they generally start at about $40. He says the rates may vary based on how highly rated the doctor might be or other factors. Once the doctor and patient can see each other over the phone or tablet, then Baker says, there are several things that can be done,
For patients who are [in need of] a range of calls, including prescriptions, they can actually prescribe remotely and legislation is actually in place for remote prescriptions. No states have telemedicine legislation. So there’s no need to go anywhere. You see them, you can have your consultation. Obviously they can tell you that you have to move on to the callout system if it’s needed. The other part of our system is the ability to connect callouts and at the moment we’re still building up our doctor base to spread that across the US. In that particular case, when you connect, you can select the doctor Who can come out to you. That obviously takes longer and costs more. That’s about the order of $100 for a callout and depending on where you live something like an hour.
We asked Mark Baker if he expects the telemedicine calls will be able to take advantage of remote monitoring for things like blood pressure, weight, or blood sugar, or even single lead ECG’s like those done by AliveCor:
That’s a very important part of extending our model and we are actually working quite closely with a company that does exactly that. In fact, I’m involved with that company too and that’s exactly what they do, a number of wireless sensors which would enhance the system. Obviously in the first instance, having a system which has easy access lowers the barrier to entry. But once people accept that kind of approach, the enhancement is a great advantage.
Baker says the telemedicine visits will come first, followed doctor calls later this year.
We’ve actually accelerated our launch by getting our software bundled onto home panels, icon-smart panels. These are the panels that allow you to control functions in your home. So that’s helped increase our demographic. We have about 100,000 panels, I think, smart panels going out as of this month with Kalldoc on them. So this will go across the nation. The tablet are distributed through Bright Spark, and we’re also going to sell those direct as well. The other side of things, the doctor side, we’re now accelerating and we’ve got a screening process which we’re increasing. We’re getting about 25 doctors a week adding on at the moment, but this is rapidly accelerating, so we’re building up that base of doctors more.
Baker says most of the doctors KallDoc is recruiting fall into two categories:
they are doctors approaching retirement, semi-retired doctors, who have a system where they can either run themselves into the ground and work at an ordinary practice, or they can retire and lose that interaction with patients and a lot of value and also at the same time lose their income. So to have something which allows them to practice on their own terms, their own number of hours that they want to, when they want to is actually very attractive. And these are obviously very experienced doctors, doctors many people would turn to by preference. To lose them from the system is a huge shame. And the other group that we discovered, and at this stage I was not only talking to doctors but looking at the state statistics, and somewhere between 5% and 7% of trained doctors would like to practice but can’t because of the system. And so the other group are ones returning after bringing up a family, wanting return back to medical practice, but perhaps not wanting to completely abandon their family. One would imagine doctors who have children, maybe the children have reached school age, but they still want to be there when the kids come home. And so they want to have some flexibility. And they may be happy to take a few evenings out for medical work as well but they don’t want to be back into the grind and taking away from their family. That’s the other major group.
Baker feels this might be very attractive to young doctors who may just be finishing residency and might want to start a family before joining a full time practice.
Baker says Kalldoc fits in line with the on demand economy, like Uber for medicine.
the background really comes about from having talked to doctors in the US and patients in the US over a number of years. I could see that there was both a gap in the market initially for easy access to doctors and from the doctor’s point of view, a need to get out of the highly structured and pressured clinic and hospital environment to be able to practice medicine in a more old-fashioned way on a one-to-one basis. It seemed that the internet should provide the ability to do that in action. So when we saw the rise of things like the Uber model, that seemed to be a very good framework and I talked to doctors in the US and there seemed to be a lot of interest in that….
Because I’ve spent time both in California and in Britain, it’s quite an interesting change. They’re more similar than you might think, in general. They’re quite liberal societies, quite technological. But in Britain, a doctor will come out to you, so it’s quite astonishing when you’re in California that you can’t pick up the phone and the doctor can’t come out. So that was obviously a call to action, you need KallDoc out there. Also, it’s a little bit of a shock if you’re in the US and you’re used to the British system, of a hospital asking for money, it seems like a strange thing.
Baker feels that the complications of healthcare in the U.S. will make KallDoc a very attractive alternative, especially as Medicare and insurance carriers become more accepting of telemedicine. Now, we’re just waiting for the return of the black bag.
Editor’s Note – There are competitive services to KallDoc. You might want to check out these four:
Heal – Heal uses an Android or iPhone app that arranges doctor house calls between 8 AM and 7 PM.
Telemedi – This service does not offer house calls, but does offer 24/7/365 voice or video chats with an MD.
Doctor on Demand – Again, no house calls but live two-way video chat with a physician.
HealthTap – Another app driven two way video service. Again, no house calls, but under $50 per month for unlimited access.
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