OnMed unveiled its OnMed Station this week. It’s a walk-in kiosk featuring an automated examining room, a screen for two way communication with a healthcare provider, and a dispenser for meds that the provider can prescribe and dispense on demand.
As the global population ages, the ratio of health professionals to patients declines, and telemedicine advances, could the OnMed Station herald a new era of on-demand medicine to ease the pain?
The features of the system, as described in a pre-launch press release, include:
- Automated measurement of patient’s height, weight, and BMI
- Storehouse of hundreds of medications along with self-service lab kids
- Body temperature readings through thermal imaging
- Blood pressure, respiration and blood oxygen saturation readings
- HD video and audio for remote diagnosis by a doctor
- 3D facial recognition for patient identification
- Surface sterilization via ultraviolet light and air purification between patient visits
- Privacy glass
- Live, life-size interaction with a remote doctor
- Secure transmission of examination results to the patient’s regular doc
- Paper and electronic prescription capabilities for meds not on board
“We have been in stealth mode for more than six years,” OnMed CEO Austin White said in the release. The company’s goal, he said, was to create the most comprehensive telemedicine system in the world.
Working from call centers will allow doctors to see more patients and the form factor of the kiosks allows it to go just about anywhere, including the airports, universities, and rural areas envisioned as locations by the company.
It looks like the company has the right mix of automation and live interaction to make this work. Now to see if patients and healthcare providers agree. See more OnMed Station in action in the video below.
