In today's newsletter, we presented the story of a pain management center that's rolled out a "virtual clinic" for patients to use when they're at home.  The virtual clinic, which to be honest sounds fairly basic, offers some videos and animations patients can use to do physical therapy at home. Since the material's only available to patients at the "real" clinic--who have a username and password--the doctor can track how often patients log in.

Given how much bang the pain clinic is getting for its online buck, it seems to me that more medical practices and hospitals ought to consider this approach. Yes, I know that some cutting edge organizations have experimented with true clinics in 3-D cyberspace, hosted in sci-fi style environments like Second Life, but as this case study illustrates, things don't have to be that complicated to be effective.

Just about any mid-sized or large hospital or medical practice could afford the modest investment involved in creating a virtual clinic, which isn't exactly a miracle of IT execution if you stick to the pain clinic's basic model. Especially in the case of specialties where personal behavior change is critical--such as cardiac rehab--it could be a nicely participatory way of getting patients invested in their own care without having to roll out less-mature, more-expensive telemedical technologies. (Of course, there's no substitute for things like reading patients' blood sugar and blood pressure levels, but this could at least be a first step.)

Though small practices might not have the resources to create their own virtual clinics, my guess is that there will soon be turnkey models available to them at a low monthly fee if the idea takes off. Such clinics would probably integrate most or all of the emerging aspects of e-medicine, such as virtual visits and access to laboratory test data, if vendors are smart. (By the way, hospitals, you could offer this as a service to further bind practices to your side, without spending a fortune; and how about white-labeling a vendor's option? No big stretch, right?)

I guess what I'm saying here is that the mindset involved in setting up a virtual clinic just makes a heck of a lot of sense. If you're going to have a medical home in cyberspace (and let's face it, most doctors will at some point in the future), setting up a "clinic" of some kind is a no-brainer. The only question is how to get it done. - Anne