Why Anytime Pediatrics is making human connection its number one priority in virtual care

The stereotype in healthcare is that required sterility can lead to cold, unfeeling appointment spaces—and telehealth runs the risk of removing even more personal interaction. Talking to a screen lacks intimacy, leaving a void felt by both patients and providers despite modern technology.

Anytime Pediatrics, the first and only pediatric telemedicine platform, works to fill virtual spaces with human connection, providing high-quality healthcare for children and opportunities to strengthen relationships between pediatricians, patients, and parents.

Relationships at the heart of successful telemedicine

Mick Connors—CEO of Anytime Pediatrics and a pediatric doctor for more than 30 years—passionately believes in the value of patients’ and families’ long-term relationship with their pediatrician. While many telehealth companies are focused on speedy appointments and matching patients to providers, Anytime makes relationship-building their core priority.

“We started Anytime Pediatrics with the idea of advancing innovation that fosters relationships and elevates pediatric care,” Connors says. “What we’re trying to really put at the center of our business is existing relationships… [because] we know building existing relationships fosters better care long-term for kids.”

When a child is sick or hurt and a parent can’t get to the office to see their doctor, Anytime ensures children, and their parents, still get to see their regular physician.

“It’s not, ‘Hey, pick a random doctor,’” Connors said. “It’s really about creating technology that helps both patients and parents easily access it—but we also know that we need [providers] to get on board. So how do we make it seamless and easy for all parties involved?”

Breaking a medical mental block

Virtually connecting pediatricians to their existing patients may seem straightforward enough, but technological shortcomings aren’t the only barrier to making a platform really work.

Sometimes, it’s about shifting a mindset in an industry that’s been doing things a certain way for so long, sharing that another way might be better, more seamless— even provide a greater connection— is the biggest challenge to overcome, Connors explained.

”I think overall, as a physician myself…we have electronic health portal fatigue of, “Gosh, not another login, another password, another device,’” Connors said. “It really required something like COVID to come along to force people to try it and say, ‘Oh, wow. This really works. I can do a lot more than I thought via telemedicine.’ So provider adoption was a barrier early on, but now we see many are embracing what we do and getting innovative with virtual health.”

Creating a connection

While COVID-19 may have helped Anytime Pediatrics convert providers and their patients into customers, the technology, workflows, and overall customer experience in place before the pandemic has kept both parties coming back—but it wasn’t always that way.

“In earlier versions of the platform, we had challenges with dropped and frozen calls, low bandwidth video situations, etc., and we just weren’t meeting the high quality standards we wanted,” Connors said.

Anytime Pediatrics began looking for a partner that could deliver their video and audio communication needs with the dependability, scalability, and resilience to deliver over 40,000 monthly visits and beyond without issue. They needed a solution that allowed them to not only be efficient with their current platform but think ahead about new features as their customers’ needs change and evolve. They landed on Twilio.

“Twilio enables us to deliver new functionality at scale and really shorten our delivery timeframes. It absolutely enables my team to deliver things much quicker versus using a multitude of tools again. What I’m the most grateful for is the efficiency it brings,” CTO Mike Ross said.

With Twilio, Anytime Pediatrics has built solutions that let users invite third party clinicians to join an existing conversation; click to call functionality that allows doctors’ offices to call directly or send a link in an SMS to help patients immediately join a video call; and many other thoughtful nuances that are functional on their app as well as a user’s browser.

“With Twilio as our partner, I don’t have to go to five different providers to communicate with our customers,” Connors said. “All the plumbing is in place at enterprise scale. So I know that I might be doing 40,000 visits today, but I can do 80,000 visits tomorrow. I don’t need to move any levers, flip any switches or do anything. It’s just there and ready to go.”

A space to grow

The heart of Anytime Pediatrics might beat with the help of Twilio, but it is relationships that really give the platform life.

“From a human perspective, I care about the fact that Twilio is really enabling us to focus on human connections. If we had stayed on our previous platform, there’s a good percentage of visits that possibly could not have occurred. Twilio is enabling us to bring the quality care from pediatricians that really care about their patients, into their home and help them right where they are,” Ross said.

From building out a virtual waiting room using clever SMS features, to quickly getting a translator on a video call appointment with a single tap, Anytime is constantly evolving their product to better enable relationship-building between patients and providers.

“The thing is,” Connors said, “we’re not setting up just any conference call. When you have a worried parent, a sick child and a busy pediatrician who’s trying to see 30 or 40 patients a day, efficiency has to be there.”

That guiding empathy, along with their partnership with Twilio, has helped Anytime Pediatrics enable patient and provider connection during the pandemic and beyond.

“We feel very proud of what we’re developing, and I think Twilio has added a great deal to that,” Connors said. “I hope we continue to be an example of how really good technology and technology partners can come together to not just make a cool product, but offer kids better care and give parents that peace of mind that they’re looking for.”