eVisit and Infermedica Collaborate to Add Triaging API to Virtual Care Platform
eVisit, the leading enterprise care delivery platform built for modern health systems and hospitals, announced a collaboration with Infermedica, a health AI company that improves the symptom assessment and triaging processes, that will embed Infermedica API into eVisit’s Virtual Care Platform. The move will enhance the efficiency of telehealth providers by enabling front-end, early symptom assessment to help guide patients to the right care at the right place.
“eVisit plans to reduce the burden on providers with an efficient, end-to-end platform. We will integrate the most advanced medical API into our system. Adding a symptom checker to the front-end of the eVisit care delivery platform ensures providers are able to assess patient symptoms ahead of a visit, which lowers costs, improves access to care, cuts back on unnecessary ED visits and reduces spread of infections,” said Juli Stover, Chief Strategy Officer of eVisit. “Providers don’t need to invest in several point solutions. The eVisit care delivery platform is designed to support their care delivery needs, from symptom assessment, intake, scheduling, waiting room management, the virtual visit itself, all the way to prescription, discharge, and payment.”
The core function of any symptom checker is to perform a preliminary symptom assessment of patients and generate a recommended triage level. The ability to assess the patient’s condition ahead of a visit allows providers to offer personalized health services. This includes options such as text to chat, video visits for non-urgent cases, or in-person visit recommendations. It also enables prescription refills or mental health support that must be provided on the same day.
Another significant benefit to having a symptom checker at the digital front door is the ability to view the data provided in the application ahead of the visit. Additionally, this data can be integrated with EHRs, therefore reducing the amount of information providers need to key into their EHRs, saving them time. This capability also allows providers to refer to the initial evidence on a patient’s health data to order additional tests prior to a consultation, improving preparation and enhancing the patient interaction.
“Virtual care is here to stay and delivering the best digital experience possible will be vital to ensuring patient loyalty,” says Piotr Orzechowski, Founder and CEO of Infermedica. “This point is made clear in a 2020 study by Accenture where 26% of Americans said they would be willing to change their health provider in exchange for a better digital experience. Since its inception, eVisit has been the leader at helping health providers harness the power of virtual tools to facilitate hybrid care delivery. The addition of our medical API reinforces this approach, optimizing a provider’s ability to quickly assess patients and navigate them to the most appropriate point of care.”
The impact of a symptom checker on the care delivery process is clearly illustrated in Infermedica’s Symptomate Survey. The survey found that 20% of respondents who required medical consultation qualified to use telemedicine instead of an in-person visit. Furthermore, in a group planning to go to the ED prior to using a symptom check, 12.8% decided to consult with a physician first and 5.1% stayed at home after using the tool. Among those who intended to seek medical consultation, 7% stayed at home and self-cared as advised by the symptom checker. Symptom checkers help patients safely avoid unnecessary trips to the ED since they are programmed based on expert guidance and input from many medical professionals and thousands of evidence-based medical concepts.
These modest shifts in care delivery approach can result in significant returns for providers.
The integration of the Infermedica API continues eVisit’s evolution to become the market-defining care delivery platform regardless of where and how care is provided. The company’s mission is to give patients immediate access to care via a variety of entry points – whether that’s a phone call, web search, or visit to an Urgent Care facility – and allow providers to evaluate patients (with support from data analysis and symptom checkers) and quickly navigate them to the most appropriate point of care based on the symptoms they are experiencing.
