Best Doctors, Inc., the global health company dedicated to improving health outcomes by getting people the right diagnosis and treatment, today announced that it is one of 13 “Volunteer Achievement” projects honored by the Botín Foundation among 550 nominated endeavors. Best Doctors was honored for its ability to use the power of physician collaboration, telemedicine, and partnerships with major medical missions to bring improved health outcomes to those who suffer from life-threatening medical conditions made worse by a lack of local resources.
Working in conjunction with the Recover Hospitals for Africa Foundation’s Teleasistencia/Salud 2.0 initiative, a project combining quality health care, clinical collaboration, training, and research to focus on improving health care for African patients with minimal economic resources, Best Doctors was able to introduce the cutting-edge Medting platform which seamlessly connects physicians in Spain with physicians throughout Africa to collaborate on the most complex cases.
“Best Doctors continues to make a tremendous impact on countless lives by ensuring that location or a lack of local resources is not a barrier to world-class medical care,” noted David Seligman, Chairman and CEO of Best Doctors, Inc. “By combining leading technology with the brightest minds in medicine, Best Doctors is in a unique position to provide access and quality that can save lives. We are proud to work with leading foundations who are all on the front lines of providing medical care for those most in need.”
Developed by Best Doctors, Medting is a cloud-based platform that allows clinicians to easily and securely collaborate while enabling access to shared diagnostic image and video files. Medting creates an ideal forum for online tumor boards and other disease-specific meetings by negating time and scheduling conflicts.
“Thanks to the Medting platform, we have been able to improve the speed and breadth of collaboration, and can bring the best medical knowledge to many more doctors and patients,” said Macrina Camps, Manager of Fundacion Recover, one of several non-profit groups working together with Best Doctors.
Foundations, hospitals, medical societies, and health systems are using the online collaboration platform to expand physicians’ access to knowledge and shared understanding. Medting provides maximum security and data protection guarantees for patients and is equipped with powerful translation and image viewing capacity. In Cameroon, where there are .8 physicians for every 10,000 people, Best Doctors has introduced its Medting platform, allowing physicians there to immediately collaborate with physicians from a variety of disciplines in Spain on their most complex cases. Before Medting, doctors and volunteers were using mail and email when available to exchange information. The response times have dramatically improved leading to greater patient outcomes.
Best Doctors has also been an active partner with Global Oncology (GO) a leading non-profit that provides underserved nations with access to some of the brightest minds in oncology based in Boston. Other non-profit clients offer medical education courses in developing countries and leverage Medting to support their learning. Still others provide surgical treatment in remote rural areas in Kenya and use Medting to upload and share cases.
In many of these settings, educating local physicians is a critical long-term strategy. Best Doctors facilitates research and education by providing the medical community with a high capacity solution for storing a large volume of images and videos providing an innovative learning space and ensuring the fast and secure transfer of knowledge through telemedicine.
“As a result of these initiatives, medical professionals can make a diagnosis from thousands of miles away, based on a patient’s medical history, scans, and information posted on the network by doctors on the ground,” stated Seligman. “However, the benefits are much greater in the long term. The exchange of knowledge promotes better training for both doctors in the most remote places and the physicians in a position to gain valuable information which can then be shared even further.” The results achieved have given rise to various case studies and academic articles published in a range of scientific publications.
About the Botín Foundation:
The Botín Foundation is a family-run initiative created in 1964 by Marcelino Botín Sanz de Sautuola and his wife Carmen Yllera, to “mitigate the needs and promote the social development” of Cantabria. Today, nearly 50 years later, and still faithful to the spirit of its founders, the Botín Foundation is Spain´s number one private foundation in terms of the volume of its social investments. At the helm of the Foundation is Emilio Botín, who is also the President of Banco Santander.
About Best Doctors, Inc.:
Best Doctors works with the best five percent of doctors, ranked by impartial peer review, to help people get the right diagnosis and right treatment. Gallup® has certified Best Doctorsas using the highest industry standards survey methodology and processesin polling physicians to discover the doctors they would choose for their own care. Founded in 1989 by Harvard Medical School physicians, the global health solutions company, which has grown to over 30 million members worldwide, uses state-of-the-art technology capabilities to deliver improved health outcomes while reducing costs. Best Doctors seamlessly integrates its trusted health services with Fortune 500 and 1000employers, insurers and other groups in every major region of the world. The company also designs and implements international insurance programs that help people get the right health solutions. For further information, visit Best Doctors at www.bestdoctors.com.
