Telehealth company Amwell surged in its first day of trading, exemplifying how hungry both the public and private markets are to invest in the sector whose growth has accelerated due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Telehealth provider Teladoc last week accused Amwell of infringing on its patents and demanded that its rival stop offering the products in question — setting the stage for a potential legal dispute between the two most prominent companies in telemedicine.
Doctors doing virtual check-ups over Microsoft Teams can now leverage Nuance’s ambient clinical intelligence (ACI) to transcribe the conversation and help fill in electronic health records (EHRs). The new Teams feature brings Microsoft and Nuance’s medical AI partnership from the office to the digital realm during the current boom in telemedicine due to the ongoing COVID-19 health crisis.
“We simply believe that, in the future, your doctor will connect with you sometimes in person and sometimes online,” Amwell co-CEO Ido Schoenberg told CNBC. The telehealth provider went public Thursday and saw its shares rise 28%. “It’s not a doc in the box in the cloud,” he said. “It’s basically another tool in the tool set of our trusted providers, and that will take years to develop.”
Digital medicine is increasingly attracting the attention of investors who see the pandemic triggering a sea change in the way we understand and manage our health.