MIT Sloan recently highlighted breaking medical startup Remedy. The new startup, co-founded by Michael Ng, MBA ‘16, that hopes to capitalize on the potentially post-Affordable Care Act future of telemedicine, which is projected to surge by 700 percent in the next three years.
Remedy offers affordable access to doctors augmented by an AI nurse-like interface named “Remy,” which “combines chat with a structured questionnaire that ensures patients’ details are captured clearly” and then sent to a “Remedy physician who can confidentially diagnose and treat the patient remotely.”
Ng says Remedy’s system helps doctors “treat more patients more effectively without decreasing the quality of care. And by doing so, we can provide a superior user experience at a fraction of the cost of traditional alternatives.”
Doctors and patients can correspond, exchange photos and video and discuss treatments through Remedy’s chat interface. According to the article, Remedy covers nearly 70 percent of cases that “come through an urgent or primary care clinic.” Each visit costs $30, with or without insurance, but if Remedy “cannot treat a patient, the patient will not be charged.”
Remedy mentor and Sloan lecturer Joshua Forman projects that with the future of the Affordable Care Act in jeopardy, Remedy and other telemedicine companies are poised to be of enormous service to freelancers in the gig economy without “employer-sponsored health care.”
“As costs are shifted from payers to patients, a rationally-behaving, under-served market is opening up for health care services that innovators like Remedy can take advantage of. And if we see the Affordable Care Act fully or partially repealed as appears likely, there will be additional pressure on private markets to serve people who have lost their access to reimbursed, traditional health care services.”