Doxy.me (pronounced "doc-see-me") is a web-based telemedicine platform designed specifically for healthcare providers to conduct video consultations with patients. Doxy.me is known for its simplicity and ease of use.

History

Doxy.me was founded in 2013 by Brandon Welch while he was a PhD student in

Biomedical Informatics Health informatics combines communications, information technology (IT), and health care to enhance patient care and is at the forefront of the medical technological revolution. It can be viewed as a branch of engineering and applied science. ...

at the

University of Utah The University of Utah (the U, U of U, or simply Utah) is a public university, public research university in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States. It was established in 1850 as the University of Deseret (Book of Mormon), Deseret by the General A ...

. The platform was initially developed to provide a simple and free, HIPAA-compliant telemedicine app for obstetricians to use in a remote prenatal care study. At the time, there were no available solutions that met these criteria, so Welch, along with fellow student Dylan Turner, built the first version of doxy.me using the newly released

WebRTC WebRTC (Web Real-Time Communication) is a free and open-source project providing web browsers and mobile applications with real-time communication (RTC) via application programming interfaces (APIs). It allows audio and video communication and ...

framework. Much of the early development of doxy.me was funded by winning several student innovation awards, including "Best Business Plan" in the 2014 Utah Entrepreneur Challenge. Launched to the public in 2014, doxy.me experienced steady growth reaching 80,000 healthcare providers by the start of 2020. The

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

significantly accelerated the platform's adoption, with the number of users growing to 700,000 within two months. As of 2024, approximately 1.3 million healthcare providers worldwide have conducted over 400 million sessions on doxy.me, accounting for nearly 10 billion minutes of telehealth. Doxy.me is widely adopted across various healthcare settings.

Features

Doxy.me is popular among healthcare providers due to its simplicity, quick implementation, clinical workflows, and availability of free and low-cost versions. Doxy.me offers a set of features that replicate clinical workflows in a remote environment, including: *

Video Conferencing Videotelephony (also known as videoconferencing or video calling) is the use of audio signal, audio and video for simultaneous two-way communication. Today, videotelephony is widespread. There are many terms to refer to videotelephony. ''Vide ...

: Secure, private real-time video meetings between healthcare providers and patients. * Patient Check-In: A streamlined process allowing patients to check in for their appointments. * Patient Queue: A system to manage multiple patients, similar to a traditional waiting room queue. * Virtual Waiting Room: A virtual space where patients wait for their consultation, with options for custom branding. * Patient Transfer: Allows seamless transfer of patients between different healthcare providers within the platform. * Custom Branding: Options for healthcare providers to customize the platform’s interface to reflect their brand identity. In addition to these core features, doxy.me offers apps that extend its functionality including teleconsent, a feature developed with

NIH The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in 1887 and is part of the United States Department of Health and Human Service ...

SBIR funding, screenshare, whiteboard, file transfer, payments.

Privacy and security

Doxy.me takes a data-lean approach to privacy and security. The platform does not collect or store patient health information, only the healthcare provider knows the patient’s identity, which ensures patient privacy and security through

anonymity Anonymity describes situations where the acting person's identity is unknown. Anonymity may be created unintentionally through the loss of identifying information due to the passage of time or a destructive event, or intentionally if a person cho ...

. This approach, combined with compliance with

HIPAA The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA or the Kennedy– Kassebaum Act) is a United States Act of Congress enacted by the 104th United States Congress and signed into law by President Bill Clinton on August 21, ...

GDPR The General Data Protection Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2016/679), abbreviated GDPR, is a European Union regulation on information privacy in the European Union (EU) and the European Economic Area (EEA). The GDPR is an important component of ...

, and

HITECH HiTech, also referred to as Hitech, is a computer chess, chess machine built at Carnegie Mellon University under the direction of World Correspondence Chess Champion Hans J. Berliner. Members of the team working on HiTech included Berliner, Murra ...

regulations, makes doxy.me a trusted platform for secure telehealth consultations. HIPAA compliance is included in the free version.

Related activities

One study found that nationwide use of doxy.me in 2021-2022 resulted in an approximate annual CO₂ emissions savings of 1,443,800 metric tons. Founder and CEO, Brandon M Welch, MS, PhD, co-authored the boo
Telehealth Success: How to Thrive in the New Age of Remote Care

External links

Official website

References