It feels like it was only a few weeks ago that we were praying for Telehealth to be implemented in GP clinics over the coming years.  We pictured a gradual roll out, drip fed slowly by types of service, or locations.  It was the type of thing that could only be implemented in baby steps.  There was simply no other way to disrupt the GP workflow to bring Telehealth front of mind.

Then the day before recording this episode, the baby just not only took some steps, it did a triple backwards summersault while running a marathon in under 2 hours - as in, it was announced that we now have universal Telehealth available in Australia.  As Greg Hunt our health minister said - it is a decades worth of work in a matter of days.  It seems pretty apt that the only way to implement a disruptive solution like Telehealth was to have a disruptive problem like COVID-19.  

Many of the tools that GPs need to enable all of this, are created by healthtech providers.  It goes beyond the obvious things though, which is just giving a doctor a phone or zoom log in and say go nuts, there is a fair bit more infrastructure that goes around making the COVID-19 screening process and tele-consult actually work.

Healthtech providers around Australia have been working day and night to fasttrack new features and modify their existing products due to COVID-19.  And the leaders of 4 of those well known companies are here on this live panel discussion today.  

Tess Van der Rijt - CEO of Medinet

Dr Ben Hurst - CEO and CoFounder of HotDoc

Pete Williams - CEO and CoFounder of Medipass

Rami Weiss - CoFounder of Healthshare

What’s really cool as well, is all of these panelists have previously appeared on the Talking HealthTech podcast - so they will join this elite club that I just made up for people who have appeared not just once, but twice, on the show.  

This episode was recorded during a livestream video panel interview, where attendees engaged with the panelists, asked questions, completed polls and networked amongst their peers. It was super cool to have the direction of the show be heavily influenced by where the attendees wanted to take it. 

In this episode, hear from the leaders of some of Australia’s biggest healthtech companies on how they are supporting GPS and clinicians during the COVID-19 pandemic. Learn about the practicalities of implementing Telehealth in a clinic, the nuances of the new billing rules announced by the government and recommendations for some of the best tools to run a productive practice during social distancing restrictions.