At the end of the day a hospital’s main purpose is to connect physicians and patients and provide both parties with the tools they need to succeed within their treatment plan. Providing patients in rural areas with the physicians and tools necessary to accommodate to the needs of their treatment plan is becoming increasingly difficult due to the challenges associated with recruiting physicians to rural areas as Scott Polenz mentions in this podcast.
Not to mention the expected shortage of physicians in general, regardless of rural or urban setting. With the expected physician shortage we believe platforms that use technology such as AI and Machine Learning to interpret patient data that is both stored in medical records and being fed to the platform in live time will ultimately be the way that hospitals and health systems are able to stay connected to and care for patients from a distance.