Doctors spend more than a third of their day on a computer. Much of that is wasted time, according to Ian Shakil and Pelu Tran – time that they should be spending with patients.
The answer? Shakil and Tran say it lies in Google Glass.
The pair say Google's innovative new glasses, which have yet to hit the market, stand poised to tackle one of the biggest pain points in today's healthcare system – the interaction between doctor and patient. And they've got $3.2 million in venture funding to prove that point.
Shakil and Tran co-founded Augmedix a few years back while attending Stanford University. They'd started in medical devices, but found their "eureka moment" in 2012 when trying on a pair of Google Glasses. Shakil, the company's CEO, said they decided to "drop everything" at that point and focus on Google Glass.
With newly announced VC funding from DCM and Emergence Capital Partners and a string of pilot projects with health providers under their belts, Shakil and Tran and now ready to move into the spotlight.
"There's a huge need to get doctors away from the computer and in front of the patient," Shakil told mHealth News during a recent interview. "That interaction with the patient is a huge need, and a huge pain point."
Shakil and Tran, the company's chief product officer, see Google Glass as a communication tool for physicians, rather than a clinical tool. It's used to tap into information sources such as the EMR, and to record the doctor's encounter with the patient.
"Doctors put on Google Glass and they go in and have that humane, high-touch conversation with patients that they always want to do," said Shakil, who added that doctors first need to ask a patient if it's OK to wear Google Glass before going ahead and using the device.
"You're not going to walk in (to a hospital clinic) and see all the doctors wearing Google Glass," he added.
And while Google Glass has been attracting mixed reviews in other areas and the mainstream media, both Shakil and Tran said they've received nothing but support from the healthcare field. "We're seeing great excitement and adoption," Tran said.
Augmedix is diving headlong into a rapidly growing market dominated by startups and bolstered by top-ranking healthcare systems like San Diego's Palomar Health, which has its own Glassomics incubator, and Boston's Beth Israel-Deaconess Medical Center, which recently tested Google Glass in its Emergency Department.
