The doctor can see you—5,000 miles away

Trisha Thadani | USA TODAY

A new telehealth app, Curely, provides a way for patients to directly connect with nearly 600 board-certified physicians from 15 countries around the world.

That's an attractive reach for immigrants who prefer to consult with physicians in their country of origin, or may not have access another way.

The company, which was founded by Christian Assad, M.D., Paul Lee, M.D., and entrepreneur Joshua Hong, recently secured $2 million in seed funding. The app officially launched Tuesday and is available for download on iOS and Android.

Doctors on Curely can create profiles for themselves – background, specialty, degree, etc. – and control their own practices by setting their price per consult and choose their own availability.

When a patient has a health question or concern, they can scroll through the doctors, browse their profiles and prices, then decide which one to consult.

"It's like ordering something off Amazon," said Lee, CEO of the company.

Lee said Curely requires an extremely low bandwidth, so people in remote areas with weak connections can still access the app.

"We're targeting everyone, not just people in the U.S., but people who do not have access to doctors," Lee said. "Many immigrants in the U.S. also want to talk to doctors back home because they trust home-country doctors more."

Telehealth apps are increasingly important today as the healthcare industry experiences a persistent primary care shortage. A June report by the Kaiser Family Foundation outlined the states that have the lowest percent of need met for primary healthcare professionals. Connecticut had the lowest with only about 15% of need met, followed by Rhode Island and Alaska, with about 35%.

In March, the Association of American Medical Colleges predicted that, as the nation's population ages, the U.S. will face a shortage of 46,000 to 90,000 physicians by 2025.

One of the solutions that the AAMC prescribed for this problem is the creation of more innovative technologies, said Janis Orlowski, chief healthcare officer at AAMC.

"When we envisioned ways to bridge the gap [of physician shortages] the concept of being able to locate a physician from anywhere and use telehealth in certain cases was one of them," Orlowski said.

Curely is far from the only telehealth app out there. DoctorOnDemand and HealthTap are just a couple of the competitors in the digital healthcare marketplace, but Lee said Curely's international reach is what really sets it apart from the others.

Guillermo Guzman, a doctor located in Monterrey, Mexico, said in an email to USA TODAY that he responds to about 100 patients through Curely from countries ranging from Argentina, Spain, Honduras, and the U.S.

Anne Chung, an emergency medicine physician in the Boston area, said she uses Curely during her free time between appointments or during downtime after work. Since Curely does not allow the doctors to prescribe or diagnose over the app, she said patients mainly message her for educational follow-up questions or, at most, about basic ailments – such as a red eye or a bad cough.

Chung charges $10 per 12 minutes messaging session (doctors can charge up to $50 per session) and offers suggestions on their health issues, or recommends if they should go see a doctor in person or not. Patients can also send messages to doctor's inboxes for a starting price of $2 per message.

For millennials, who grew up with texting and video chats, consulting with a doctor electronically may not seem so foreign – but it may take some getting used to for the older generation, Chung said. Many of the patients Chung consults with over the app are between their late 20s and early 40s, and she said it is extremely rare for her to receive a message from someone over age 50.

Orlowski said healthcare is following the digital explosion that is happening in other fields, and the industry is "on the road to getting it right."

"We're going to see this industry transform, but we need to use caution," she said. "If you lose money in your bank it's one thing, but if you get bad medical advice – that has serious consequences. We have to be skeptical about the industry, but I'm excited where it is going."

Follow Trisha Thadani on Twitter: @TrishaThadani.