Discovering Medical Tourism

I love web 2.0! I have quickly reviewed Medtrotter, and to be honest I was extremy skeptical about patients ranking their surgeon…. Yet, let s now just consider a health condition such as asthma. You are living in Charlotte, north Carolina and you are looking for some information: you got it, through a new online doctor directory called Xoova.

Xoova besides being graphically and ergonomically remakable has the notable advantage of proposing consistent entry keys. One will write its location (state, town in the US exclusively) plus a health condition among a list: the cross research will lead to a series of profile. I have for instance typed Los Angeles California and aging: I got 1439 profiles most of them being relevant on the 8 first pages ( I was lazy going onwards). With 500000 doctors featured and 20000 profiles completed by the doctors themselves, we can talk about critical size! Doctors are not ranked everyone has a chance to grab new customers!

Now is one question I would like to ask Xoova: where is the money? please shed the light on this, I really have no clue. Xoova even advertises: “physicians who have integrated Xoova into their practices report a new patient yield of 5% or better, significantly better than typical phone-based patient referral services. There is no cost, software to install or contract to sign, meaning you can create an effective online marketing tool for yourself without risk”. In fact, the model of revenue is blur: appointements online are free, registration is free (for a positive yield…). I don’t get it.

Xoova is however developing an innovative new point of entry for its database: it consists in indicating your health plan to find the right doctors. Perhaps this will lead to an interesting revenue model sharing with Xoova promoting some HMO (through their doctors) or conversly HMO communicating on their plans through Xoova. The company is planning to further extend by raising 5 million USD beginning 2008, perhaps to cash in the strong community they have been building for 2 years? 

The medical secret is experiencing hard times in the US. For instance, three years ago, Bill Clinton underwent heart surgery in the New York’s Presbyterian hospital, Even though he went there through a fake identity, some people tried to crack the security system and elicit some confidential information. A local sportsman even got crazier “attentions”. The director of that same hospital states that he thwarted 1500 attempts to rip some medical information about this sportsman from his own employees!

Many companies are currently adapting themselves to carry out a 100% informatics medical approach by transferring all medical procedures online (for instance, Intel , Google, IBM, Wallmart). The latter companies have all expressed a strong interest in putting up personal medical dossiers for all its employees. However, the generalization of such systems will take time. According to a research done by the General Hospital of Massachusetts, in 2005, 1 out of 4 medics  were using such electronic medical dossiers (against 89% in the UK) when they could access to it and 1 medic out of 10 (!!) were using technology while making an impacting decision such as diagnosis, prescriptions…

Besides there is a genuine fear of people usurpating the identity of someone to get some medical information. In 1996, the Congress voted for a law that states that such misdemeanor is a criminal infringement.  Yet, cases have not led to real punishement…

However a looming debate is not on piracy but privacy. The underlying question is what kind of information one could keep secret and what the doctor should keep for them. Let’s take a practical example: I am a woman that got raped at the age of 19 and got pregnant in the process. I needed to abort (what a scenario Uh?). However I don t want my relatives to know about this last fact. Hence I need to cover up part of the medical fact related to the rape which is the case with the redtape cluttered system.

More extensively, companies are now asking for people to fill up medical dossiers before getting employed or even while employed. In a funny fashion, the people entitled to getting these insurance related information are HR managers often also in charge of sacking employees. This puts up a system whereby people will be less willing to give all the information they have in hands on their health status.

Medical tourism is directly concerned by such measures and problems. In fact, as we have stated in an article before, medical tourism needs an electronic follow up to be efficient. The current debate on electronic medical dossiers leads to know which kind of information can be retrieved or filled during a medical check up in Asia and poses the problem of a common software (or at least format) between all hospitals…