Opinion: The new face of healthcare innovation—7 ways telemedicine changes the healthcare landscape, and what it means for you

It's no secret that the healthcare space is broken. A 2013 study conducted by the Journal of Patient Safety estimates that between 210,000 and 440,000 patients die in the US each year from accidental practice. To put this into perspective, an estimated 600,000 Americans die from heart disease each year and another 565,000 from cancer (source: www.cdc.gov), which puts healthcare incompetence as the third leading cause of death in the United States. The pool of entrepreneurs in the race to offer mobile health consulting is growing larger by the day. With telemedicine, users have the power of accessibility in their hands with apps such asTouchCare and iBluebutton (see below). While the concept of telemedicine isn't anything new, having the accessibility to one's doctor is.