Yandex. Health

Yandex.Health is a mobile application for online consultations with doctors. Users can contact a pediatrician and therapist - doctors are ready to get in touch at any time. In the future, it will be possible to consult with other specialists. The app is available for iOS and Android devices. The system uses VoxImplant platform solutions.

The choice is either a web version or a mobile application. Pediatric and adult doctors of various specializations are available to the user. Prices start from 499 rubles for one consultation and higher (for different specializations, prices differ). Communication with a doctor is carried out either in text chat, or in voice, or through a video call. An important point is that switching modes of communication is available during the consultation process (for example, a doctor may suggest turning on video to clarify symptoms and later switching back to audio or text correspondence). Each doctor has a seniority, education information and a user rating. There is an anonymous regime and express consultation for 99 rubles. (Only a therapist, pediatrician and gynecologist). Also on the site there are veterinarians for consultations on pet health.

2020: Direct integration with the ZdravCity online service

Since August 2020, the online service for ordering medicines and goods for beauty and health "ZdravCity" (project CV "Protek") accepts orders for the delivery of medicines through the portal "Yandex.Health" in the format of direct integration. This was announced on August 25, 2020 at the Protec Central Office. More details here.

2018

Launching online counselling with psychologists

In June 2018, a service of online consultation with psychologists appeared in Yandex.Health. Users can consult with specialists about solving a specific problem or take a course of meetings for a detailed analysis.

You can take a short or long course. The latter lasts from six months to several years and helps you learn to consciously look at your life, analyze and understand the causes of certain actions, the service description says.

Yandex.Health collaborates with professional psychologists, who have three to fifteen years of practice. All of them constantly take additional advanced training courses  and supervision  (they discuss their work  with a more experienced psychologist). 

Each psychologist connected to Yandex.Health passed a two-stage selection. The  quality of consultations is monitored by the Yandex.Health medical expertise department. Also, the work of psychologists is regulated by  ethical codes of  various schools  and directions  in psychology.

A quick reference is available to the user on the education of each specialist and specialization. The cost of the session is 2500 rubles with each psychologist.

The Russian company noted that they decided to make a "quiet" launch in order to check the demand for such consultations online.

The service is designed for those people who do not have time  to go  to a psychologist who do not like face-to-face meetings and prefer to communicate online. In addition, the initiative can be useful to those who do not have psychologists in the city who could be trusted. During  a remote consultation, the psychologist talks to the user, asks important questions, performs psychological exercises, etc. 

Yandex emphasized that many psychologists work on Skype, and services for online psychotherapy are becoming more popular.  There are no official statistics on this subject, but from 2008 to 2018, more than a dozen services for online psychotherapy appeared, such as  Amwell,  Talkspace   and 7Cups. ^[1]

Express consultations

In April 2018, Yandex.Health appeared express consultations. They allow you to ask the doctor a short question and quickly get an answer. Such consultations cost 99 rubles and last five minutes. Now they are carried out by pediatricians, therapists and gynaecologists.

"People often have health questions that they don't think they need to go to the doctor. But this does not mean that the answers to them must be searched on the Internet. Express consultation is an ideal option in such cases. For example, if a person does not know what medicines to take on a trip, or he is concerned about something, the doctor will give him qualified advice. And the sooner the patient goes to the doctor, the easier it will be to identify the disease at an early stage if he is sick, "says Alyona Tarasyuk, head of the medical services examination department at Yandex.Zdorodya

If the problem cannot be solved quickly, the doctor will offer classical advice. It lasts half an hour and costs 499 rubles. If the patient agrees, he will pay only for a regular consultation, and if not, the service will not take money from him. After the conversation, the doctor will send a report with recommendations so that the user does not forget anything and does not confuse.

2017

Launch of online consultations with veterinarian

On September 28, 2017, Yandex announced the launch of online consultations with a veterinarian in Yandex.Health - he will answer questions related to pet health and care. You can seek advice about the health of a pet from anywhere on the planet where there is Internet.

You can talk to the veterinarian by video link, voice or text chat. Having clarified the details about the condition of the animal, the specialist will recommend treatment or - if required - advise to contact the veterinary clinic. So that the advice is not lost, after consultation he will send a report.

It can be difficult for a person to understand how an animal feels - because it cannot tell what and where it hurts. Going to the veterinary clinic for advice is not always convenient: many pets are hard to endure a trip and waiting in line. Yandex.Health makes it possible to consult with a veterinarian without leaving home, "said Grigory Bakunov, head of the service.

The online consultation service with the veterinarian was launched in cooperation with the Moscow veterinary center "Zoovet." In addition to dogs and cats, the center's specialists answer questions about hamsters, mice, guinea pigs and other domestic rodents, as well as turtles, lizards, birds of different species, snakes and monkeys. Veterinarians advise from eight in the morning to midnight Moscow time. The first consultation costs 99 rubles, each subsequent - 499 rubles.

Section "Medicines"

In the Yandex.Health application, the "Medicines" section appeared: in it you can find detailed descriptions of drugs, find out their cost and availability and immediately order them to a suitable pharmacy.

About 13 thousand drugs and goods for beauty and health have been collected in the Yandex.Health catalog. Users can read their description, find out indications for use, contraindications and analogues. After a person adds drugs to the basket, the application will show the nearest pharmacies where they can be taken. The service accepts orders in the amount of 500 rubles. When the order is ready, the application will send a push notification. Users already pay for medicines at the pharmacy.

The partner of Yandex.Health is the company ZAO Company CV Protek: goods are booked through its ZdravCity service, it also provides data on medicines. You can buy goods in one of 14 thousand pharmacies throughout the country that work with ZdravCity.

2016

Yandex will launch a medical video consulting service

On November 29, 2016, it became known about Yandex's plans to launch a telemedicine service, which will allow doctors to provide consultations to patients via video link. However, such a decision will be able to earn only after the adoption of the law on telemedicine in Russia. 

According to Izvestia, citing representatives of Yandex, the company is going to provide telemedicine services based on the Yandex.Health service launched in early November 2016.

Yandex is preparing to launch a telemedicine service that will allow doctors to provide consultations to patients via video link

The company intends to connect to the clinic service, which will connect the user with the doctor via video conferencing. However, Yandex has not yet decided whether its own video communication service will be developed or an agreement will be concluded with partners on the use of ready-made technologies.

As for the timing of the launch of the service, before Yandex can provide real telemedicine services, it is necessary to wait for a change in federal legislation.

Both the Ministry of Health and Internet companies are now working on the amendments. We really hope that they will soon be accepted and telemedicine in one form or another will become possible, "said  Grigory Bakunov, director of technology distribution at Yandex and head of the Yandex.Health service.

Advisor to the President on the development of Internet technologies German Klimenko believes that the legalization of telemedicine will change the structure of services, since it will be possible to obtain a license not for the organization, but for a specific specialist.

According to the forecasts of the analytical company IHS, by 2018 the volume of the remote medicine market in the world will be $3.5 billion.

The adoption of a law that legalizes telemedicine in Russia may take place by the fall of 2017. By the end of 2016, the relevant law will be submitted to the State Duma, said Leonid Levin, head of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy.^[2]

Start of work: data on 130 clinics in Moscow and Moscow region

On November 7, 2016, Yandex announced the launch of a service for recording for a paid appointment with a Yandex.Health doctor. At the first stage, the application will be available only to residents of the Moscow region.

Yandex.Health shows the nearest clinics on the map. If the company told Yandex how much the initial reception costs, then this information will also appear on the label.

The application helps to select the right specialist using test surveys. If conflicting information is detected, the user will be advised to go to the therapist for a start. Records of all visits are stored in Medkart, photos with doctor's recommendations are added there.

Yandex launched a service for recording in paid clinics

By November 2016, more than 130 clinics in Moscow and the nearest Moscow Region were connected to Yandex.Health. In the future, this number will constantly increase.

The current version of Yandex.Health is just the first step, says project manager Grigory Bakunov. - We are considering the possibility of connecting diagnostic centers to the service, as well as thinking about cooperation with institutions that conduct the reception under the compulsory medical insurance policy. With the help of technology, you can simplify life not only for patients, but also for doctors, saving them from routine paperwork.[3]

The Yandex.Health service is available as applications for mobile devices on the iOS and Android platforms.

As explained to Kommersant in Yandex, the company did not make a version of the desktop program. since the topic of health and medicine in search queries is most in demand on mobile devices, the company explained. The number of medical-related requests on tablets and smartphones has been growing by 10-40% per year for the past two years, while they do not increase from desktop computers.

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