As telehealth tech explodes in use, can medicine preserve the human touch? | FierceHealthcare

For all the benefits that come with technology in healthcare, sometimes there’s no replacement for a little dose of humanity.

Never was this more apparent than after media reports surfaced earlier this month that a physician used video chat technology to tell 78-year-old Ernest Quintana he was close to death. Quintana had been hospitalized at a Kaiser Permanente hospital due to progressive lung disease, according to reporting from U.S. News and World Report and CNN.

Quintana’s granddaughter, Annalisia Wilharm, who was sitting by her grandfather’s bedside in the ICU at the time, told media outlets that hospital staff rolled a machine into the room and a doctor appearing via a livestreaming video chat told Quintana that no treatment options were left. He died the next day.