Coronavirus is threatening to become a pandemic. Now, health systems and telehealth vendors agree to bring connected health to the forefront to reshape the future of health care.

Telehealth providers are challenged to give recommendations due to many unknowns.

Peter Antall, MD, President and Chief Medical Officer for American Well, talks about how telehealth might be used.

Telehealth can be used to connect a health care provider with a patient who is based at home via smartphones or tablets. It can be used for provider (specialist)-to-provider consultations in remote areas.

Telehealth carts are present in health care settings so they cannot only be used to import care, but also to limit healthcare workers’ exposure to the virus by using a cart in the isolation room.

Patients are primarily met through live video interactions. But they can also be seen by informed telephone calls, synchronous chatting for therapy and asynchronous secure messaging for ongoing communications.

The use of symptom trackers and chatbots can also be explored. These technologies allow algorithms to be created and adjusted as more information comes in about coronavirus. Bots interact with patients to conduct assessments, triage and ongoing support. The bots can escalate an interaction to a telehealth encounter or refer the patient for in-person care.

Traditional remote patient monitoring has helped in managing some chronic conditions. But the next step in home monitoring includes consumer devices like smartwatches, home TV and home medical tricorders used to perform remote examination.

Telehealth visits are sufficient to complete a robust initial assessment. This lets the provider to assign a risk category- make other diagnoses, or categorize the patient as “worried well,” Some patients might need additional care, as most telehealth in the home lacks certain medical peripherals. Need for referral would include high risk patients needed to be tested or a patient requiring escalation of care as the illness is severe.

Telehealth visits are usually sufficient to screen patients, assign a risk category, answer questions and recommend next steps the patient should take.