For seven years, Austin White had a vision: To provide medical services to the market in a 24-hour, easily accessible way. On Tuesday, his dream comes to fruition.
White, the CEO and co-founder of OnMed, launched the company out of Clearwater. OnMed allows doctors to have conversations with patients, diagnose and even prescribe and dispense medication through video and audio.
"Oh my goodness — it’s like the gestation period of waiting on your child," White said. "We're very anxious, very excited. It's been a big push moving to this moment so now we feel blessed and we're getting real work done in the field."
The station will be first deployed in Georgia, with plans to make its way back to Florida in the near future. White is looking at "over a dozen" letters of intent and hopes it will change the way people utilize emergency medical services.
"It's not only quicker, it's more efficient," he said. "You have the opportunity to have a clean and sanitized space versus sitting with 20 other people who are violently ill. It's 15-20 minutes, you get your medicine, then head home."
The way it works is a patient enters a pod, where the door immediately fogs to allow the patient privacy. A physician — either through OnMed or contracted from a medical facility — will consult with the patient, while having access to resources including thermal imaging, which can be used to measure body temperature and diagnose infection. For the possible long line of patients waiting to be seen, the room will be sprayed down with ultraviolet surface and air sanitization to eradicate pathogens from each ill patient.
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The technology can also be taken international sooner rather than later. The company's patent was approved in Israel and is pending in 46 other countries.
"We firmly believe health care access is not going to do anything but get worse as the population continues to grow," White said. "And to have them so underserved, it's brutal. The VA population, senior population — there are 10,000 seniors turning 65 every day and that's just in this country. And simple antibiotics and histamines and consultations with a board certified physician would be lifesaving with other countries, so we're looking into that as well."
White acknowledged there will be certain sectors of the population that "gets" the technology and thought process behind the technology quicker than others, specifically when it comes to concerns of sharing personal information. But he added eventually, accepting that a doctor's visit can happen virtually will just become a mind shift.
"I remember the ATM — people said, 'We’re going to put my credit card in machine and get money out?'" White said. "With Delta, they would walk me over to kiosk to put my credit card in to get a boarding pass. Technology is readily adaptable and available. There's a certain population that will get it quicker than others, but in the end once they see it, you probably won’t go back to a [traditional] non-emergency treatment way again."
