Justin interviews Sylvan Waller, Founder & CEO of Alii Healthcare @aliihealthcare. Alii Healthcare develops and offers what they refer to as Intelligent Care – services that enable consumers to receive high-quality healthcare by connecting with high-quality physicians. Alii’s telehealth platform, Bond Intelligent Care, is a mobile application that creates a face-to-face connection with an ER doctor the moment you need a problem solved by a doctor.
We sat down with legal expert on healthcare matters, attorney, Sidney Welch, of the Polsinelli law firm on our monthly episode with Medical Association of Georgia. What is it? How is it utilized? And, what are the licensing, regulatory, and legal concerns around it?
Georgia Composite Medical Board (GCMB) has stressed that it is essential for telemedicine patients in the state to receive the same high standard of care they would in a traditional office setting. GCMB adopted a number of telemedicine rules in 2014 that “allow the Composite Board to take disciplinary action against licensed physicians and allied health professionals who practice telemedicine if they do not provide the minimum standard of care.”
Georgia’s rules require physicians and other allied health care professionals who deliver care by way of telemedicine to…
Controlled substances for pain or chronic pain treatment cannot be prescribed through telehealth – but a physician or a nurse practitioner or a physician assistant can order appropriate labs or other diagnostic tests.
The physician who provides the care via telemedicine must make a “diligent” effort to ensure that the patient is seen and examined in person at least once a year by a Georgia-licensed physician or other appropriate health care professional.
Special Guest:
Sidney Welch, JD, of Polsinelli 
This week we sat down with Adrian Davis, CEO of MyIdealDoctor, a telehealth company. Adrian shared how he had spent the early years of his career in health technology and equipment sales and distribution. With the passage of the ACA he and several of his associates saw an opportunity to help meet a need for access to medical care, taking advantage of technology.
They launched the company to begin to help patients to be able to speak directly with a physician from wherever they are using phone, smart phone/mobile device, or via a computer connection. Their initial focus has been upon episodic patient needs centered around non-emergent complaints such as respiratory infections, minor cuts, sore throats, etc.
In many cases the physician is able to use the camera on the device, along with interview, to make a diagnosis and prescribe medication to treat the problem. Additionally, if the patient’s complaint is too severe or worrisome to be able to handle the problem remotely, they make recommendations to seek care in a nearby urgent care center or emergency department.
In this way MyIdealDoctor is able to have an impact on the volume of patients being seen in the urgent care and more importantly, in the emergency rooms, allowing them to focus on more acutely-ill patients.
The company has focused their initial service model on corporate health, providing their care model to businesses offering the service as a component of their employee health plans. MyIdealDoctor will be providing their service to the general population soon.
Special Guest:
Adrian Davis, CEO/ Co-founder of MyIdealDoctor 
Nirav Desai, Principal Health Strategist for Mobiquity
On this week’s show, Diana and I sat down with health technology strategist, Nirav Desai, of Mobiquity. Mobiquity is a professional services firm trusted by hundreds of companies to be their mobile engagement provider. On a global scale, the trends, strategy, users, platforms, technology, development, organizational issues of mobile are complicated. Mobiquity eliminates the complexity.
We talked about how important the Mobile component is for all enterprises today, including healthcare. The ACA has created requirements for providing patients with access to portals where they can connect with their health providers and get access to their health data. Mobiquity helps health enterprises create more effective applications and platforms for handling this requirement as well as better outcomes for population health management.
Nirav shared some troubling statistics (~125,000 people/year die due to incorrectly taking their medications). We discussed how mobile technology and applications can promote better adherence to prescribed care by notifying providers if patients are taking meds as directed as well as giving providers access to real time patient data remotely.
Additionally, technology platforms can facilitate making decisions about care plans by showing aggregate data across a practice’s patient population as a whole. In this way, trends may be identified that allow more proactive approaches with the care plan.
We talked about the way mHealth and teleHealth are overlapping now. Previously, telehealth was mainly a way to deliver care to a patient, particularly in mental health. Now, with mobile health, more data can flow from patient to provider and the patient can take a greater part in achieving positive outcomes through engaging with a mobile platform. These mobile platforms can push educational information and reminders to help facilitate care plan compliance. Some telehealth platforms now have mobile components to them that enhance the patient encounter and have more robust data.
Mobiquity is also making available a behavior change platform called Delta IQ, aimed at helping to change patient behaviors such as smoking, alcohol consumption and other health behaviors. The platform “learns” as the user engages with the information, adapting what is displayed to the user to better facilitate effectiveness of suggested interventions.
Special Guest:
Nirav Desai, Principal Healthcare Strategist, Mobiquity 
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