Clínica Alemana based in Santiago, Chile is a distinguished healthcare institution regularly ranked as one of the top performing centers across Latin America. Recently, they launched their telemedicine platform Alemana Go.

We spoke to Loreto Bezamat, Clínica Alemana’s Director of Innovation and Digital Products to learn more about their experience.

Q: How did Covid-19 affect the launch of your telemedicine platform Alemana Go?

A: I would say it accelerated it. We had been using telemedicine for a handful of cases, but the pandemic rapidly expedited and scaled up the process. We are now offering consults across more than 40 medical specialties and subspecialties, and these are increasing weekly. Almost 200 of our doctors, including psychologists and nutritionists, are providing consults and telerehabilitation services through Alemana Go.

To accomplish this, we set up a work cell that developed a minimum viable product in less than a month, but that was only possible because we had a high level of collaboration and integration between departments.

Q: What were the greatest challenges you faced during your expedited launch?

A: When you build a digital product, one of the greatest challenges you encounter is delivering a frictionless experience to the user. As you know, telemedicine is a complement to in person care—it does not replace it— so ensuring a seamless experience across the different channels and touchpoints is even harder.

For a successful digital platform, you need to understand the user’s context and experience from beginning to end. You need to understand the challenges users will have adopting the technology. And by deeply understanding the challenges, you are then able to offer an experience that above all is simple. We relied heavily on the medical team’s feedback and tapped on our entire institution’s skillsets to design our platform in a way that is intuitive, and throughout the launch, we’ve added a handful of features that facilitate patient-provider interactions.

Q: What are some of those functionalities you added to enhance Alemana’s telemedicine consults?

A: We developed Alemana Go to increase patient touchpoints and coverage; to help us interact with them all times, wherever they are. With that in mind, we designed a multi-device platform (computer, tablet and phone accessible) with features that make it easy for patients and doctors to have everything they would need in one place. For example, the platform allows patients to send documents before their video appointment, and doctors can easily send prescriptions, schedule lab tests, schedule subsequent consults, and make referrals to other specialists if needed. We are developing new features that complement both the virtual and in person care, under the umbrella of trust and confidentiality.

Q: How do you envision this initiative shaping care across Alemana in the long-term?

A: I think this is just the beginning. Alemana Go has already increased accessibility and coverage for our patients; it has also reduced patient travel costs. We have expanded our services to patients with reduced mobility and made our high-end specialist services accessible throughout Chile, even in highly remote regions. This initiative has a high focus on health promotion, disease prevention, and patient follow up and monitoring. We are now looking into other digital solutions we can leverage to further support this goal and help us enhance the way our patients engage with Clínica Alemana, as well as with their own health. Innovation is at the heart of our institution and it is what keeps us at the forefront of healthcare.

Q: What lessons have you gathered so far, and what recommendations do you have for other organizations thinking of launching telemedicine?

A: I think that to truly develop a telemedicine product that is patient centric, organizations will need a high-level of coordination and collaboration across the different departments within the organization. For us at Alemana, the launch of our virtual platform was undoubtedly a whole-system effort. We had one or multiple representatives, which we call ambassadors, from the medical, digital, marketing, finance, IT, and legal teams all meeting weekly. I recommend involving them all because you will need everyone’s skills.