Beyond the Clinic: Transforming Your Practice with Video Consultations

Beyond the Clinic meets the growing demand for simple, practical and step by step advice for healthcare practice owners that want to embrace digital technology and introduce a sustainable new business model around video consultations to their practice.

It is very clear that digital is going to substantially disrupt the way healthcare works and telehealth is one substantial aspect of it. Telehealth projects have been run for many years and their clinical effectiveness has been proven. With the availability of bandwidth, affordable high-definition hardware and highly flexible, workflow-aware software, now is the time for telehealth to become a standard way of delivering healthcare.

Many practices are aware of the upcoming changes but are not prepared for them. Others have experimented and given up because they’ve not been able to make the transition sustainable. Information about how to introduce video consultations is confusing and often focuses on technology and doesn’t consider how to change behaviour and make the new service work financially. There is no current, step-by-step book available that provides answers to the questions most commonly asked by practice owners.

As the founder of Coviu, a turn-key telehealth solution for private practice, Silvia has seen time and time again where practices fail and has worked with several businesses that have been very successful. Silvia can provide realistic advice for practice owners on every aspect of the transformation process from idea through process design, training, pilot introduction, all the way to business-as-usual.

The process works for GP clinics, specialist practices, and allied health practices such as psychologists, physiotherapists, audiologists, dietitians, speech pathologists, exercise physiologists. The book provides advice on how to make sure that an existing in-person service is not disrupted while a new, flexible digital service offering is made available as an additional service.

Beyond the Clinic is the answer for healthcare practice & business owners who want to transform their business with innovative care models and lead it into the digital age.

Praise for the book

“Dr Silvia Pfeiffer has an extensive background in computer science and healthcare consulting in a wide range of health environments, and as such is excellently qualified to write this book “Beyond the Clinic – transforming your practice with video consultations.” Prof Peter Yellowlees, Past President, American Telemedicine Association.

“Silvia is passionate about enabling medical video consultations in Australia - her experience in this industry is quite unique.” Anita Mustac, Founder of online mental health service Dokotela

“Silvia has an amazing vision for what is possible in the technological side of telehealth, and pairs this with a genuine interest in the needs of health professionals. In the fast-moving world of digital health, early movers like Silvia have a wealth of valuable insights to share.” Karen Finnin, Director of Online Physio

“Where healthcare meets technology, it is always hard to find someone who really understands the unique challenges that are present - Silvia gets it!” Greg Borman, Director of online occupational therapy service Biosymm

Dr Silvia Pfeiffer is the CEO of Coviu Global, a best-of-breed turn-key video consultation software. Silvia is on a mission to change the way healthcare services are provided to bring fairer access to healthcare for everyone.

Silvia has worked with numerous healthcare professionals in introducing video consultations to their businesses. This includes specialist businesses - such as psychiatrists, neurosurgeons and oncologists – allied health – such as speech pathology, physiotherapy, psychology and dietetics – as well as primary healthcare and GPs. She has learnt what makes such a digital transformation work and what doesn’t and is passionate to share her experiences.

Silvia has a PhD in computer science and a double degree in business management and computer science. Silvia has worked with Google, Mozilla and CSIRO in the past to develop world-leading online video technology and has published two textbooks about HTML5 video. Coviu is the culmination of her experience in creating new software solutions and businesses.

For this book, Silvia has interviewed many healthcare businesses that have embraced video consultations - or have tried to embrace it - to find out what worked and what doesn’t work. Her process has been used in several projects and is tried and tested.