CQUni alumnus at the forefront of telehealth rollout
Published:22 June 2020

CQUniversity alumnus and software engineer for medical software solutions company MedicalDirector, Jamie Richter
Telehealth
services will continue to boom well after the COVID-19 pandemic has passed.
That’s according
to CQUniversity alumnus and software engineer for medical software solutions
company MedicalDirector Jamie Richter.
Mr Richter,
who has played a part in the rollout of COVID-19 medical initiatives such as
telehealth and electronic prescribing during the pandemic, believes telehealth
will “undoubtably flourish in the coming years”.
“While
nothing will ever truly replace the need for face-to-face, figures have
suggested that anywhere up to 50 per cent of general practice consults were
conducted via telehealth or telephone during the pandemic,” Mr Richter said.
“While
nobody expects those lofty numbers to remain the norm, we do expect to see
the rise of the telehealth-only medical practice!
“I’d like
to believe that the health industry has always harboured an appetite for
telehealth, but for various reasons it never gained traction – privacy/security
concerns, Australia’s patchy broadband availability, a lack of patient
awareness, and undoubtedly a touch of politics thrown in there somewhere.
“Putting
aside the chaos of COVID-19, one of the huge positives has been the undeniable
proof that telehealth can be a viable alternative to face-to-face consults
under the right circumstances.”
Mr Richter,
who studied a Bachelor of Information Technology with CQUniversity, was
involved in the evaluation and technical discussions surrounding
MedicalDirector’s Clinical telehealth solutions.
“It was a
very humbling experience to be at the digital frontline of the health software
fight against COVID-19,” explained Mr Richter.
He said
thanks to a cloud-based system known as Helix, and a team of talented
individuals, his organization was able to release a telehealth solution and
have it working in practices only a couple of weeks after initial conception.
Looking in
the future, Mr Richter said the medical industry will make huge leaps in
technology thanks to the pressure put on the industry by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Industry
behemoths like Apple, IBM and Google are already doing some amazing, innovative
work in the health space. And those are only the publicly announced projects.
“Skip
forward a decade and it would not surprise me if a person could walk into their
GP with a serious complaint, have a real-time full body scan assessed by Google
artificial intelligence and then have that diagnosis cast to a specialist on
the other side of the planet. It’s not entirely fanciful.
“With that
said, true industry disruption often comes from start-ups and indie developers.
I have to admit that I was amazed by some of the incredibly clever ‘iso
projects’ that indie developers were sharing during the early days of the
pandemic.
“Getting a
person’s pulse via a webcam – now that’s cool. I can’t remember the number of
times I thought to myself: ‘why didn’t I think of that?’.”
Mr Richter
started at MedicalDirector 14 years in customer support, followed by a few
years in the data team, before eventually transitioning to software engineering
about a decade ago.
“A career
in software engineering can be incredibly challenging, especially given its
mercurial nature and constant requirement for self-learning.
“A day
won’t pass where you aren’t learning something new or revaluating what you have
already learnt,” Mr Richter explained.
“My
experience at CQU has given me the knowledge to understand and apply the
fundamentals of my industry, the tools to instil a hunger for personal growth
and self-learning, and the confidence to take on any challenge presented to me.
“Heck,
every now and then when a task feels overwhelming, I cast my mind back to that
first airline seating algorithm I hashed-up in CQU’s Programming A course and
smile.”