linkedcare is a novel communication and information service for the health sector focussed initially on two main actors: the patient and the doctor. It will also link other actors in the sector to the same platform in the future to make processes in health care - p. ex. when we go to a doctor's appointment and everything that follows this appointment - more fluid, faster, and less cumbersome. For more detailed information on the many functionalities of linkedcare please consult www.linkedcare.com in detail or visit our facebook- or linkedIn-pages.

You just need to go to www.linkedcare.com then click on the top right corner of the screen and you'll find the sign-up form. Please fill in the form with all the details requested. Your credentials as a doctor need to be verified with the relevant health authorities to make sure that everybody registered as a doctor on linkedcare is actually a doctor and authorized to practice. Once you have submitted the sign-up-form we will verify your information and cross-check and once we have positive confirmation your account will be fully activated. linkedcare will notify you as soon as your account is fully activated.

linkedcare significantly reduces the workload of the doctor. Starting with booking consultations, via the possibility of having video consultations with your patients, the automatic classification of health conditions according to ICD-10, issuing prescriptions electronically, and much more.It means that citizens have the possibility to interact with all the information related to their health on their mobile phone, their tablet, or their computer. This allows for a completely different degree of interaction and interoperability than if they keep their records somewhere in their home and on paper.

As already said, patients will have all their health related information at hand at all times. This will save time but - most importantly - it will enable caregivers (doctors, nurses, physiotherapists, pharmacists, etc.) to get the information they need quickly and in the right format to be able to provide quick response to the patients needs,

linkedcare will streamline all processes between the doctors and the patient - and not only. This starts with booking consultations online, goes via the diagnosis (the process to determine the clinical condition of the patient) including the anamnese, prescription of additional tests and analysis and / or medication and ends with support to the follow-up of the patient.

It is very simple. All the information will be in one place. The clinical history of the patient, the medication prescribed (and in most cases also the results of the treatment), clinical records, lab analysis, etc. On top of it, the information is stored in a secure place in the cloud and cannot be retrieved by unauthorized personnel. This means that neither the patient nor the doctor can 'lose' the information. They can get access via their mobile phones, their tablets, or their computer - and this is valid for patients and doctors. We estimate that around 35-50% of the time used for consultations is spent on such bureaucratic tasks and that with linkedcare this may be reduced significantly to less than 15%. Much of this gain in productivity is due to the way linkedcare has been built which enables it to interact with the data from different sources on a real-time basis, e.g. warnings of incompatibilities between different medications prescribed to the same patient will be appearing in real-time.

There are several - actually many tools - that help us achieve this objective. Scheduling of appointments is supported by linkedcare since it provides multiple calendar functionalities, from booking to reminders, etc. The SOAP process which is internationally recognized as the most appropriate for consultations has been digitized and guidance is now possible directly from the computer with all actions/information duly and automatically documented. Prescriptions will be done electronically and automatically linked to the home delivery service (if available). Lab results, imaging documents, etc. will be stored in the patients linkedcare account and will remain available for as long as deemed necessary. All the information will be in one place and it can be shared with the patient and/or with other doctors that the patient may be consulting with (e.g. hospitals).

Yes and No! We like to see linkedcare as a tool to support doctors and to share information between doctors and patients, or, for that matter, between various doctors of the same patient, to make sure that everybody has all the information available at all times, as a tool to educate both doctors and patients. linkedcare is a support tool for all actors in the health sector including the patient, it has characteristics of a social network, of a knowledge sharing network, and as a means to collect information from society at large about what we might call 'public health'. The latter appears to be particularly interesting after what we learned from the COVID pandemic.

A large part of the interactions between patients and doctors does not require physical proximity. Much can be resolved with linkedcare - sometimes in an even better way than via an in-person consultation - by doing remote consultations via video. This is a central element of and linkedcare has been conceived from the start having remote consultations in mind. While the benefits of consultations via video had been recognized already in the past, the danger of infections during the pandemic has pushed this aspect of linkedcare to the forefront as it provides all functionalities that the doctor may use during an in-person consultation but in this case on video. So, in many cases, video consultations will be the ideal and appropriate solution. There is less danger of contagion, they are less time consuming since patients are not obliged to dive into the daily traffic of cities small or large.

More people are traveling than ever before, they do it more frequently and distances covered are much longer. This means that accessing the doctors that normally follow a patient may not at all be a trivial thing to do. Being able to access your doctor via the click of a mouse or a video-call from your mobile phone may make all the difference and take a lot of unnecessary stress out of traveling. On the other hand, being able to share the health information with the doctor that is being consulted can be the defining issue in the treatment: at the right time and based on the right information.

This is one of the central elements in running an online health platform. Information contained, in particular information on the health situation of citizens, is private and highly sensitive. They must be protected! This is one of the reasons why linkedcare has decided to work only with the most respected, and globally acting, cloud providers for hosting of its servers: these companies are able to guarantee the best possible and imaginable protection against unauthorized access of information, providing an unparalleled level of security. Reports on security threats are readily available and can be addressed immediately either by linkedcare or - as in most cases by the hosting provider itself - long before linkedcare would detect such a threat.

Patient data will - as a rule - be stored on servers within the respective national territory, in the case of India, data will be stored on servers run by the AWS (Amazon Web Services) that are amongst the best in class in terms of data protection. AWS offers a GDPR-compliant Data Processing Addendum (GDPR DPA), enabling you to comply with GDPR contractual obligations. The AWS GDPR DPA is incorporated into the AWS Service Terms. The DPA applies automatically to all customers globally who require it to comply with the GDPR.

linkedcare uses commercially available databases that contain information on approved drugs in the country, information provided by the health authorities on diverse types of health aspects, linkedcare also verifies with local health authorities the identity and professional authority of doctors.

No, linkedcare will never charge based on the number of consultations or transactions processed. Doctors will pay a subscription fee to linkedcare that will give them access to all the tools and information that is being provided. Special future requirements may result in additional subscription fees but not in fees based on transactions.

While originally conceived and launched in Portugal, linkedcare has been developed, updatedm, and upgraded during the past 2 years by our local partner, AppWelt Pvt LTd located in Nagpur, Maharashtra in cooperation with us. linkedcare CHC Pvt Ltd of Delhi/Gurgaon holds all the rights for linkedcare for the market in India and may sublicense the technology if appropriate.

mylinkedcare is the patient portal associated with linkedcare where the patients can see all information relevant to their health condition and their appointments with doctors. mylinkedcare will alert patients to take their medication at the right time, it will provide an overview over all other health-related information, it allows gathering feedback on medication adherence, etc. mylinkedcare also enables the patient to have consultations with their doctors via video. During these consultations their doctor has the same information and tools available as if the patients were seeing the doctor in person!

We will, for obvious reasons, not advertise or otherwise disclose features of linkedcare or mylinkedcare that are still in the pipeline and due to be incorporated and launched in the coming months. What we can say is that we have a long list of features to come that will make it even more interesting, attractive and essential for both citizens and doctors.