Surfing the Broadband Bit Stream

Dr. Sidney Smith is a Savannah dermatologist; Stacey Roach is a software developer. When they got together, they came up with what they call the Complete.MD software suite.

It allows patients to use the Complete.MD Connect smartphone application to schedule doctor’s appointments, make referrals, watch recorded video consultations with their doctor and manage their prescriptions.

“Being able to access a portal to schedule an appointment will save the patient time and will save the clinical organization the staff positions spent taking scheduling calls,” Roach said.

This ‘time-saving’ app is just one part of the software that they’ve been working on for the last six years, during which, they’ve been constantly releasing new products.

“We’ve had well over 200 software releases in that timeframe, usually once every week or so,” said Roach.

It all started when Smith went looking for software that would help him educate patients on some of the dangerous side effects of medications they prescribed to treat various diseases. Instead of finding software, he found Roach. And before a month had passed, Roach was trying to develop new tablet-based software for Smith.

The first product came with the application — Consult.MD, a video documentation feature that enabled Smith to record videos and send notifications directly to patients from the tablet he used while working.

Not only could Smith fill out paperwork electronically, he could record his consultations with patients about medical procedures, surgeries and newly prescribed drugs so they wouldn’t have to read flyers or packets of paper.

“We give them paper handouts and who knows if they’re reading them,” said Kerri Cook, a former nurse practitioner with the SouthCoast Medical Group who has moved to Complete MD Care. “This allows an additional way to provide patient education.”

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Major markets in the United States have few providers to choose from and there’s little differentiation among them. Just check out the infographic below, and it becomes more evident.

In October, I worked with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalistDavid Cay Johnston to share the findings of his new expose, “The Fine Print: How Big companies Use ‘Plain English’ to Rob You Blind.” Johnston was especially critical of the telecommunications industry, which he deemed uncompetitive. “A growing number of industries are monopolies, duopolies and oligopolies even as they claim to be in highly competitive markets. Cable, Internet and telephone provide a good example of this. In most places you have one phone company and one cable company offering similarly slow, by world standards, Internet speeds and very similar prices,” he said.

This infographic visualizes what services people get for their money in major U.S. cities. You can decide what - if anything - is wrong for yourself. Note that it highlights the fastest Internet speeds in some of the metro areas, compared to the national average (which is 6.6. Mbps downstream).

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