Telemedicine may face significant mistrust in the US population

(image via Pixabay.com)

You can offer the best medical services in the world and be ignored by the public at large: unless there is trust developing between you and your customers, you will not advance. The image above poignantly captures the problem of trust: asking us to trust makes us feel sometimes in the shoes of the hapless snail climbing a parked car tire. While telemedicine has been touted as the "future" of public healthcare and a lot of enthusiasm accompanies the term on the internet, a recently published study by TechnologyAdvice Research indicates that up to 75% of patients would not trust a diagnosis delivered via telemedicine services.

The report is worth downloading and reading in full. Here are two interesting facts:

1. 65 % claimed it as "unlikely" that they will choose a virtual appointment
2. Younger people are more inclined to trust telemedicine: 83% among 18-24 year old respondents and 76% among 25-44 year olds

Note however that the sample size of this survey is rather small - 504 adult americans - and the result should be treated with caution.

When asked to comment on the negative perception telemedicine seems to still elicit (based on this survey), Rob Stehlin, founder and CEO of CashDoctor, said he wasn’t surprised; nor was he taken aback, as things can change really fast once a tipping point is reached. According to him, the tipping point is really at hand because almost 80% of patients between 18 & 44 trust telemedicine.

"In tele-medicine, mobile meets medicine. The impact of telemedicine will be felt when it crosses the digital divide. Current majority of healthcare consumers do not support a model that is foreign to their existing model, but the generation raised on smart mobile devices will be lining up in support of mobile medicine".

Rob’s word of advice?

"For healthcare providers looking to survive in the future: Go retail or go home! Actually - now that I think of it - it is even more damaging because I would add: Go mobile retail or go home! All models in the future will be customer centric, period".

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