American Well unveils Snapchat for doctors (sort of), multiway video visits

American Well

American Well announced the latest version of its telehealth platform, AW9, to allow patients and providers to invite additional participants to a live, video visit in real-time. With the new multiway video capability, a patient or provider to invite other participants, such as a specialist, caregiver, health coach, family member or language translator into a live, video visit. The best part is that third and fourth parties do not need to register and can join the visit immediately by clicking a secure email link.

“Far better than scheduled, follow-up appointments or a group email thread, multiway video gives the full care team the ability to communicate with each other, at the same time, during a live visit,” Dr. Roy Schoenberg, CEO and co-founder of American Well said in a statement. “This will make patients’ and families’ lives easier, and facilitate better communications between providers when consulting about a patient.”

Another new feature, called Sidekick is described as “Snapchat for doctors,” is a photo app for provider-to-provider consults that allows a provider to share a photo with another provider during a video curbside consult without saving that photo to the device.

“It lets one clinician show another an Xray, medical record, rash – virtually anything you can snap a photo of, during a video consult,” Dr. Schoenberg said. “When the visit ends, ‘poof’ the shared image disappears – so records and images are not duplicated in an EMR, and the remote consulting physician does not have to be on a hospital computer or log in to see important information in the moment.”

American Well also unveiled Patient Self-Scheduling capability so that patients can schedule their own appointment with a specific provider in advance. This, according to the company, is especially helpful to patients who need recurring care such as those seeking behavioral health services, people managing chronic conditions, and patients who need follow-up care.

Earlier this week, the telehealth company launched the Telehealth Mobile SDK to enable any organization to embed telehealth directly into their own apps and under their brand.