In the early weeks of 2020, thousands of Cleveland Clinic doctors were scrambling to see patients on whatever software and devices they already had at home — and at the time, smartphone apps like FaceTime and Google Duo had to cut it.
It was a frenzied, almost overnight transition to virtual care spurred by emergency federal waivers letting doctors use less secure apps designed for consumers to conduct telehealth appointments. But two years into the pandemic, Cleveland Clinic and other large health systems are ditching those stopgap fixes in favor of fewer but more complex, expensive, and customizable tools that can toggle between video visits, lab results and scheduling — and host hundreds of thousands of video and audio visits each year.
The services these health systems decide to spend on could hint at which companies may ultimately win out in a crowded, multibillion dollar virtual care market. Companies like Amwell and Teladoc have sought to be health systems’ preferred one-stop platform for years, competing with newer entrants like Zoom and Microsoft.
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