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A significant but underappreciated segment of the telemedicine industry direct-to-consumer (DTC) telemedicine services may hold clues to the future of telemedicine in the post-pandemic world.
The pre-pandemic DTC market was dominated by three medical issues urinary tract infections, erectile dysfunction, and contraception that together accounted for 87.1% of one DTC company s visits compared with only 2.3% of visits to primary care physicians, found Tara Jain, MD, MBA, and Ateev Mehrotra, MD, MPH, both of Brigham and Women s Hospital in Boston.
JAMA Network Open reflected televisits made by one unnamed DTC company from October through December 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic drastically transformed the telemedicine landscape. But the findings highlight issues that may predict how telehealth will find a lasting place after the pandemic wanes.