The coronavirus has devastated many parts of the economy. For others, it's been an accelerant. The most notable are areas like work from home, ecommerce, or cloud computing. Another area that has boomed due to the coronavirus is telemedicine.
During the initial phases of the coronavirus, doctors' visits and procedures were delayed due to the need to limit the virus' spread. As a result, many doctors began seeing patients virtually. According to McKinsey, 76% of people who used telemedicine said they would be open to using it in the future. Eventually, McKinsey believes that about $250 billion of healthcare spending could happen remotely.
It's a win for patients and doctors. Doctors can see more patients, while patients can save time and costs. Additionally, telehealth tends to turn into a continuous dialogue between patient and doctors which has shown to yield better outcomes in the long-term.
There are many companies at the forefront of this shift. For investors, it's an attractive area because it's in the early stages of growth, it's a high margin business, and it's only a matter of time before technology disrupts how healthcare is delivered like it's disrupted other parts of the economy. Currently, Amwell (Nasdaq: AMWL), Teleadoc (Nasdaq: TDOC), and 1Life Healthcare (Nasdaq: ONEM) are the leaders in this category.
Teladoc
Teladoc is the leading telehealth company. It has 75% market share in the U.S. and 15 million members. It announced a mega-merger with Livongo Health (Nasdaq: LVGO) that it believes will be able to offer more services to customers through the monitoring and management of chronic diseases.
Teladoc's stock has been range-bound for many months. Many believe the stock is overvalued and could see a steep fall with the coronavirus ending. However such a dip could be an ideal entry point as the telehealth sector is only going to grow larger and Teladoc is at the forefront of this shift.
Amwell
Amwell is the second-leading telehealth company. Last year, it facilitated 2,000 virtual doctor's appointments per day. This year, it's doing 45,000 per day. Some of this is organic growth, while most of it is due to the coronavirus. Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) is an investor in Amwell and owns a 3% stake in the company.
The company generated $68 million in revenue during the last quarter which was a growth of more than 100%. Since its IPO earlier this year, the stock has traded around $30. It's in the same boat as Teladoc where it could see some losses in the near-term as growth slows, but in the long-term, consumption of healthcare is only going to increase due to the aging U.S. population. Additionally, telehealth will continue to take a greater share of this especially since its cheaper for insurance companies and more efficient for doctors.