There are too many factors to count that go into the patient care journey to truly understand which has the most significant impact if a better understanding was available. However, one factor has proven to have a significant impact of a clinician’s ability to better diagnose in order to provide more specific proactive interventions and that is the social determinants of health.

Improving the patient care journey is paramount to healthcare professionals across all disciplines. Especially based on the requirements imposed by the current pandemic and the ongoing need to address increasing numbers of ambulatory patients. A number of digital healthcare solutions have shown up in the last decade to digitize patient records and automate areas such as remote patient monitoring and chronic care management, but the best solution will ultimately be one that crosses all patient care boundaries under one platform and that is at the heart of Digital Medicine.

It shouldn’t be surprising that when you are well and in proximity to sick people, the likelihood of you getting sick increases significantly.  In fact, “the Journal of Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology says well-child doctor appointments - like annual exams - result in more cases of flu-like symptoms within the next two weeks.” So why do we still go into clinics, hospitals and doctor’s offices when there are new ways to address walking diagnosis and ambulatory care?

Physicians have been providing prescriptions since the beginning of history. From herbal remedies and leaching to modern day prescription medicines, the limited number of trained healthcare professionals have relied upon various methods to handle ever growing number of ambulatory patients. We are now moving into a new age of prescriptions because of COVID-19’s shelter-in-place requirements where clinicians may be prescribing new digital medicine apps to handle the remote care requirements of today.