Dr. John Selle: All right, how you guys doing?
Sumi Das: Dr. John Selle is primary care physician with a private practice. His day is full treating patients with all kinds of ailments, whether it's high cholesterol.
Dr. John Selle: I will give you a sheet on some natural ways to lower your cholesterol.
Sumi Das: Or a foot rash.
Dr. John Selle: Does that hurt at all?
Male Speaker: There it hurts.
Sumi Das: The job has a lot of headaches.
Dr. John Selle: I'll send a prescription down for that.
Sumi Das: But one of his remedies is business technology.
Dr. John Selle: Try that for a couple of weeks. Anything you want to talk about, have you been noticing anything different.
Sumi Das: Dr. Selle went to medical school at Western University of Health Sciences in Southern California, medicine has always been an important part of his life.
Dr. John Selle: I grew up in the medical family, my mom was a nurse, my father was a orthopedic surgeon and I became interested in science, so I thought I wanted to be a scientist. But I realized, I really like to work with people and the combination of science and working with people was, the formula was medicine for me.
Sumi Das: During his residency he realized he wanted to start his practice from the ground up. His hardware startup cost $6000 and although there have been implementation challenges IT has been a healthy addition to his small business.
Dr. John Selle: Basically you know an improved communication and healthcare you know lot of healthcare is communication with the patients with other colleagues with the front office. So this really makes communication lot more efficient and easy to do.
Sumi Das: One of the ways Dr. Selle is able to stay more organized is with this tablet, he uses this device everywhere he goes in the office.
Dr. John Selle: This has a wireless antenna and access labs, x-rays and I can also access the internet and lookup any information that might come up as a question during a patient interview. Its very functional, its my work horse, I need it everyday.
Sumi Das: The information that he records on his tablet about a patient goes into an electronic health record. He pays a $300 monthly subscription fee for the service. He can also write prescriptions electronically which cuts down on errors since the doctor handwriting can be difficult to decipher.
Dr. John Selle: It's nice because it sends a prescription within milliseconds to the pharmacy. I can do that right now. I can send it to the pharmacy.
Sumi Das: Doctors are known for being difficult to reach with little time on their hands, but Dr. Selle is trying to change that perception by increasing patient communication using technology.
Sumi Das: One of the things he did was built a website and email system.
Dr. John Selle: Patients can send me non-urgent messages or questions to the website. What happens is I get an email saying to check the website because I have message. Generally the turn around time is about 72 business hours I tell patients.
Sumi Das: Today Dr. Selle's small business is in good health. And he has his pulse on the future.
Dr. John Selle: I would like to do more home type remote interactions with patients in their home. You got a question about an allergy to milk.
Sumi Das: For BNET, I'm Sumi Das.
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