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5 years in the past, through the COVID-19 pandemic shutdowns, a lot of medical care went digital. For 48% of Medicare customers, some appointments changed into webcam visits, in accordance with the Middle for Medicare and Medicaid Companies. In 2024, 25% nonetheless had not less than one telemedicine go to.
However one promising type of telemedicine is underutilized within the U.S., in contrast with international locations equivalent to England and China, in accordance with new analysis from Texas McCombs: preliminary question-and-answer evaluations. For a charge lower than the price of a full go to, a health care provider can start the analysis and referral course of, based mostly on a affected person’s written or recorded responses.
In the end, the analysis finds, such screenings assist extra sufferers see medical doctors in particular person and promote higher well being outcomes. “It turns out that it does a better match,” says Ashish Agarwal, professor of knowledge, danger, and operations administration. “You go to the right doctor, and it helps you in the long run.”
Such Q&A platforms, equivalent to Teladoc and Physician on Demand, most frequently use textual content. An individual with a medical concern will get paired with a health care provider who determines what kind of care is most acceptable: equivalent to a real-time digital session or an offline go to. The chat would possibly embrace a affected person’s photos despatched to the physician and a analysis, but it surely’s not meant as an alternative to specialised medical care.
Agarwal and fellow IROM professor Guoming Lai analyzed information from a Chinese language well being care platform that was launching a Q&A service.
“The platform was grappling with the issue that we have a lot of doctors, we have a lot of patients, and we want to improve the matching process,” Agarwal says.
With Yixuan Liu of China Europe Worldwide Enterprise College, Shanghai, and Weihua Zhou of Zhejiang College, Hangzhou, the researchers checked out whether or not Q&A chats ended up as substitutes for medical care, cannibalizing from offline visits and on-line consultations.
“On-Demand Healthcare Platforms: Impact of Question and Answer Service on Online Consultations and Offline Appointments” is printed in Data Methods Analysis.
The other turned out to be true. After Q&As, the evaluation confirmed, sufferers had been extra prone to observe up with a go to to a clinic or hospital or to schedule a digital appointment.
Q&A companies elevated on-line consultations with medical doctors by 2% and elevated offline appointments by 4.3%.
Sufferers spent 6.6% extra on on-line consultations after having engaged with a health care provider on a Q&A platform.
The reason being that Q&As armed sufferers with higher info, Agarwal says. “When it comes to medical issues, you’re dealing with complex information. Sometimes you don’t even know what you’re looking for. That is where a service like this is very useful.”
The Q&As additionally had spillover results, main extra sufferers to hunt care from different medical doctors or specialists along with those they initially engaged with. Agarwal hopes the outcomes would possibly encourage extra medical doctors to take part in such platforms, making it simpler to match a affected person with the proper physician.
A future risk is automated service, he says. Synthetic intelligence would possibly have interaction within the preliminary dialog or help a health care provider of their evaluation. By utilizing AI to assist triage look after sufferers, platforms would possibly assist to alleviate the problem of matching with dwell medical doctors.
“If you are using an AI agent, it can scale up,” he says. “So maybe the concern about matching would not be there.”
Extra info:
Yixuan Liu et al, On-Demand Healthcare Platforms: Affect of Query and Reply Service on On-line Consultations and Offline Appointments, Data Methods Analysis (2025). DOI: 10.1287/isre.2023.0644
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