Microsoft Azure improves healthcare delivery for Doctor Care Anywhere

“As we move into a new world of digital healthcare, the challenges are how can we get people to adopt a new way of working and show them the benefits of that way of working,” says Dr Bayju Thakar, Co-Founder and Director of Doctor Care Anywhere. Over the last eight years, Doctor Care Anywhere has grown to cover 2.5 million patients. Its online consultation services and digital tools enable video and phone GP appointments, employee health services, patient notes and health tracking, prescription services, referrals and people travelling abroad. Through them, Doctor Care Anywhere supports thousands of clinicians across the UK, Ireland and Australia.

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The rapid deployment of new digital technologies

Doctor Care Anywhere chose to build its services on Microsoft Azure because of the security and technologies of the platform and the support it receives from the Microsoft team.

Mark Findlater, Chief Information Officer at Doctor Care Anywhere, explains, “The bit I love about working with Microsoft is the newest incarnation of the Azure DevOps platform which is facilitating really rapid deployment of new technologies with a security-backed, risk-evaluated approach.”

For patients, this means they have a trusted platform that is secure, easy to use and that provides them with information at their fingertips. For clinicians, this means support that delivers not only improved patient access but tools that are helping to join up the healthcare system and drive down costs for the payer.

Huge ambitions

Using technology to deliver equal or better clinical outcomes has always been the primary focus of Doctor Care Anywhere.

“We work closely with our clinicians, our clinical leads, our panel of GPs, our associate medical directors to try to build out the best clinical experience,” says Mark Findlater. “We’re now building out a lot more software that’s going to drive utilisation… this will again touch on Azure Machine Learning, and the Azure data platform such as Azure Application Gateway, Azure Application Insights, Azure Data Factory and Azure SQL Database - everything we can do to help the GPs make the appropriate decision with the consultation.”

“Our success over the last eight years has been immense, but there’s so much more to come in the future through the smarter use of technology,” agrees Dr Bayju Thakar. “Smarter tools for our clinicians will make their lives easier, give them better information to make better diagnoses and better management plans and a much smarter electronic health record. These are hugely exciting times.”