It happens more often than not, by the time a person walks out of a doctor’s office and gets home, the verbal details between patient-physician are forgotten. It’s so common that one health tech company is solving this problem by ensuring that you can review all the details of the appointment.
Developed by Dr. Randall Porter, The Medical Memory was created to bridge the gap between physician communication and patient comprehension. By video recording the interaction, the patient can revisit and share all the details of the interaction at their convenience.
Once the patient gives consent, the doctor can open the app housed on a mobile tablet and begin to record the visit. When the video is uploaded to the Cloud and ready for review, the patient receives an email and can log into a secure web portal for review and share with others.
“Patients forget 80 percent of what their doctors tell them, and as such, many are now using their smartphones to record visits, with or without the physician’s knowledge,” Dr. Porter, founder of The Medical Memory and a neurosurgeon at Barrow Neurosurgical Associates in Phoenix, said.
This week, The Medical Memory closed a $2.1 million seed round led by Provenance Venture Partners, which will allow them to further develop its platform and services.
“The funding will help us continue to develop new modules for other common doctor-patient interactions,” president of The Medical Memory Lucas Felt said. “And while The Medical Memory can be used on any mobile device, our current offering includes hardware, so as we roll out nationally, the funding will help with inventory.”
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A physician’s office needs to be signed up for the service. The app comes pre-installed on custom tablets or can be downloaded on to any mobile device used by a medical practice.
“We obviously see it first and foremost as a way for doctors to deliver better care to their patients. But we are seeing more and more doctors looking to share videos of interesting cases with each other, and in teaching hospitals and other organizations using it as a training tool,” Felt said.
During the recording process, doctors can keep the device in a single location or move around to focus on certain objects like a patient scan. Doctors can also add one-way medical video messages with additional information.
The company will be adding jobs in the near future as well. “We’ll look dramatically different in terms of staffing in 6 to 12 months,” Felt said.
Dr. Porter started video recordings back in 2008, but the company took shape in 2014 with the development of the app and video-sharing site.
Thousands of videos have already been recorded, and videos have been shared through 48 states. “Even though this is new to patients, they are sharing videos five or more times and spend an hour or more on our site watching them,” Felt said.
The Medical Memory is free to patients, the cost is determined by the medical practice and based on the scope of use.
“By recording an entire patient visit from start to finish, The Medical Memory can reduce readmissions and malpractice risks, significant concerns for any practice in today’s regulatory and legal environments,” Dr. Porter said.
Read more funding coverage at AZ Tech Beat here.
