GenieMD
A New Dimension to Virtual Care

The thought of telemedicine immediately gives an impression of live interactive connection through audio or video between the doctor and the patient. However, telemedicine through traditional video comes with a fair share of challenges and limitations. Dr. Soheil Saadat, founder and CEO of GenieMD points out, “Patients are not particularly in a presentable condition and do not wish to be on a live screen. Providers, on the other hand, spend equal to office-visit time on the call and yet get much lower reimbursements.” In such a scenario, what would be the best solution that resolves the problems of both the patients as well as providers? GenieMD has an answer to this. The California-based company enhances virtual care delivery by transforming the interaction between physicians and patients through an AI based, evidence based medical platform to report over 50 common symptoms by answering a short questionnaire relating to their chief complaint. “Using our platform, providers become super-efficient, addressing virtual visits in less than two minutes compared to 20 minutes on a typical video call,” adds Saadat.

Leveraging over two decades of expertise in using technology to solve real-world problems, Saadat founded GenieMD with the idea of equipping patients with the right technology that assists them in becoming active participants in their own health for a healthier life. “Over the course of time, we realized that connecting the patients to providers is of utmost value in today’s world,” he says. The company’s telemedicine platform aggregates patient’s information such as medication, conditions, allergies, and other unstructured records such as lab results and X-rays from Electronic Medical Record Systems. When not feeling well, using GenieMD iVisit, patients can report their symptoms from the convenience of home and office without actually seeing the doctor. During the computer guided interview, patient’s health history stored in GenieMD is used to personalize the questionnaire to collect the most relevant information. Once the interview is completed, GenieMD’s platform generates a report and sends it to the provider, who can then review the case and perform diagnosis and devise treatment. “Our system works like Uber; when a case comes in from a patient, it is automatically sent to a pool of participating physicians.

Using our platform, providers become super-efficient, addressing virtual visits in less than two minutes compared to 20 minutes on a typical video call

Any physician can take up the case and handle it; this also provides the advantage of balancing workload in the practice.” In cases where video offers value to the encounter, GenieMD iVisit makes the video encounter much more efficient as the physician already has all the answers patient had provided during the reporting of the symptoms. Additionally, when video visits are scheduled on predefined availabilities of the provider, delays in patients joining the calls can accumulate and make later scheduled calls unmanageable. GenieMD addresses this problem by offering a unique call-back feature where the provider after reviewing the case can optionally call the patient during their downtime, after hours or when they have an office visit cancellation.

One use case is that of a clinic in Midwest serving 900+ lives where participating physicians take less than two minutes to go through reviewing the case using GenieMD’s platform. The actual turnaround time ranges from 10 minutes to a couple of hours depending on the availability of the physician. “The platform can be used from anywhere using all mobile platforms as well as desktop bowsers making it very convenient for patients as well as physicians to use it from anywhere even on weekends and extended hours,” explains Saadat.

The company is also planning to continue to expand the use of AI technologies, machine learning and natural language processing into its platform to improve patient interaction experience. “We are working with the likes of Amazon Alexa that will interact with patients to report their symptoms and seek treatment by removing the dependence on smartphones and tablets,” says Saadat.