North Side-based MyHouseCall using smart technology to reach patients

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Three years ago, family doctor Stephen Ritz came up with a way to try to upend the medical system by making it easier to contact health care professionals while lowering costs.

The result was MyHouseCall, which is a way to summon a doctor or other health care provider through a smartphone or tablet app. Like hailing a ride from Uber, MyHouseCall offers videoconferencing with a health care professional for patients throughout Pennsylvania, and home or work visits for residents of Allegheny County.

“The target audience is the millennial generation, who are more tech savvy, but a fairly broad range of patients are using the services,” Dr. Ritz said.

North Side-based MyHouseCall, which began answering calls from patients in December, is among local efforts to revolutionize medicine through smarter technology, a field that tech giants Amazon, Apple and Google also have been taking a whack at.

Among the local beneficiaries of the drive is Bloomfield resident Bernice Renkawek, who spends most days in a wheelchair because of arthritis. On Oct. 6, the 68-yearold Ms. Renkawek began experiencing severe lower back pain and texted MyHouseCall.

“There was no way I was going to be able to get out of the house, so I began to panic,” Ms. Renkawek said. “The pain level was just really bad.”

Less than an hour later, Ms. Renkawek said she received a call from a nurse practitioner, who “narrowed down the problem very quickly” to a bladder infection. Four hours later, a local pharmacy delivered prescription medications, and she was soon feeling better.

“For someone trapped in their home, that is amazing,” Ms. Renkawek said.

Role of tech in health care

The prize for entrepreneurs taking aim at spiraling medical costs is a piece of the $3.78 trillion health care pie, the estimated expenditure in 2018 for everything from hospital admissions to prescription drugs to home care, according to Houston, Texas-based market research outfit Plunkett Research Ltd.

Tech giants also see money to be made in lowering the cost of care while breaking down the barriers to access.

Alphabet Inc.’s new research organization Verily, which was launched in April, has been focusing on using machine learning to better predict the onset of disease and explore ways to improve surgical robots. Alphabet is the parent company of Google.

E-commerce giant Amazon created an experimental lab in Seattle