Telemedicine: The First Line of Help

LDV Capital invests in people building businesses powered by visual technologies. We thrive on collaborating with deep tech teams leveraging computer vision, machine learning, and artificial intelligence to analyze visual data. We are the only venture capital firm with this thesis.

Jeff Nadler, Chief Information Officer at Teladoc Health at LDV Vision Summit 2019 ©Robert Wright

Jeff Nadler is the Chief Information Officer at Teladoc, the nation’s leading telehealth company. He oversees enterprise information technology, data and analytics, infrastructure and security, as well as ensures that the company meets all healthcare regulatory requirements. Formerly CTO at Aetna’s ActiveHealth Management, Jeff possesses more than 20 years of senior management experience in the architecture, design, and delivery of information technology on high-performance projects in the healthcare space.  

In August 2018, LDV Capital projected that the number of virtual medical consultations will surpass physical visits in the next five years. 

Taking into account what's happening now due to the COVID-19 outbreak, it will happen much faster. Jeff notes, “We are providing relief to a strained brick and mortar healthcare system by delivering care to hundreds of thousands of patients through the Teladoc platform. One week ago, we shared publicly that we did 100,000 medical visits in the U.S. alone the preceding week, and it has only continued to grow. Despite response times increasing at times from minutes to hours, people generally understand that these are not normal times, and a patient waiting at home is better than one exposed in the community if they were to seek access via the traditional health care system.”

Teladoc rolled out a custom COVID-19 self-assessment screening tool on the company's member portal and member mobile app. It is a decision tree based assessment, designed by their clinical team, to guide members to different outcomes such as: speak to a Teladoc physician, seek immediate care now, etc.

And even after it’s all over, telehealth will still be a useful (if not the main) tool to diagnose various diseases. Nadler adds, “Right now, we are hyper focused on fighting this global pandemic and while it is difficult to contemplate planning for the next one, we are confident that we are learning a tremendous amount that will help us be even more prepared for the next one.”

Diagnosing & Treating Not Only COVID-19 

Solving specific use cases is the biggest opportunity for visual technology in telemedicine. Visual technology is essential for real-time capturing patient's vital signs like temperature, heart rate, blood pressure and more, analyzing and diagnosing various skin problems, and when treating musculoskeletal issues. 

In his keynote at our Sixth Annual LDV Vision Summit, Jeff shared some insights on modern-day technologies that could be your next doctor.