Blog

Congratulations! Your institution has considered the countless benefits of offering a Remote Second Opinion (RSO) program, such as improved patient access and increased geographic reach. Your team is undoubtedly ready to jump into planning out the best program for your patients and providers. While it can be easy and exciting to visualize your RSO program helping patients, the process of getting to your go-live date can feel overwhelming. Your team may be asking big-picture questions such as:

“How do I start a Remote Second Opinion program?”
“What stakeholders need to be involved in the RSO implementation process?”
“How long will the implementation of my RSO program take?” 

A few weeks ago, the American Telemedicine Association (ATA) held their annual conference in San Antonio, Texas. The show floor was filled with impressive futuristic devices from augmented reality glasses, to home health monitoring technologies, big data products, and more. Executives from Microsoft and Google, Kim Swafford and Bakul Patel, took the stage together, kicking off the weekend with exciting updates and reminders of helpful features that emerged from the pandemic era, such as YouTube’s improved searchability, now including personal stories to help people learn about health conditions.  When asked ‘what’s next?,’ panelists joked about the potential for ChatGPT, Kim learning about it from her teenager, but both ultimately settled on describing the buzzword of the weekend, ‘omnichannel.’ 

Cancer continues to be the second leading cause of death, with an estimated 1.9 million new diagnoses and 609,360 cancer deaths in the United States in 2022, according to the American Cancer Society. This statistic alone is astounding, with the number - 1.9 million -rivaling the population size of our largest cities. It would be like the entire population of Philadelphia being diagnosed with cancer or nearly all of Washington, D.C. passing away from it. And we are only talking about one year.

Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center is globally recognized for their leading research, education and innovation in pediatric care. Consistently ranked as a top pediatric hospital by U.S. News & World Report in their annual Honor Roll, Cincinnati Children’s was most recently ranked as third in the nation in 2022. With second opinion programs emerging as a new channel for accessing specialty expertise from afar, Cincinnati Children’s has ensured that children across the United States can benefit from access to their widely acclaimed disciplines and physicians through their own online second opinion program.  

Now that the dust is settling as we get accustomed to our post-pandemic world, those in the telemedicine world and organizations thinking about providing remote second opinions are still seeking clarity on what remote programs are possible. Has anything changed? Or, are we back to where we started before the pandemic?