Getting sick and going to see a doctor, frankly, sucks. If you’re there, most of the time you’re sick and don’t want to interact with anyone. You just want to lay in bed. If you’re there for a checkup, you’re annoyed that you’re not doing something more interesting with your free time. You’d rather be just about anywhere else. You have to fill out lots of paperwork, and have to go into your wallet to look up different numbers and codes that you completely forgot about. You then have to remember if there were any antibiotics you were allergic to when you were 4 years old and quietly dread that you’re going to be poisoned to death by that forgotten drug. Plus, the magazines suck. (Memo to all doctor’s offices: you must get a subscription to both People and Us Magazine. It should just be a rule. They’re easy to flip through, don’t require intricate thought, and don’t make you feel like a total idiot like Star magazine does. They keep you entertained, if not enlightened, for a solid 20 minutes each. And they don’t really age. I can flip through an issue of People from April and still be amused. Thank you. This is almost as important as if you cure me of my illness or not.)
After that, you have to wait in a cold doctor’s office and wait for an interminably long time, eventually laying down on the cold waxy sheet that’s on the fake bed. Then the door clicks open, and you have to scramble to sit up so that the doctor doesn’t think you’re taking a nap in his office. Then he talks to you for what feels like no time, prescribes something, and you’re on your way. The whole process really could’ve taken about 5 minutes instead of a whole lot of hassle. 1DocWay, a brand new medical startup website originating in St.Louis but developed in New York that’s launching soon, is planning to change all of that. Instead of going to an office, people can schedule appointments on their website, video chat with licensed doctors, and manage prescriptions. Doctors can use the site to make extra money beyond the normal patients that they usually see, and reduce the overhead of having an office and employing a staff full-time.

Conclusion

A service like this will invariably be met with skepticism at the start. When it comes to health, people usually don’t want to take chances. Going to an unheard of doctor that’s far away via the Internet seems like a risky proposition, especially for those of us that aren’t tech-inclined in the first place. But once 1DocWay proves itself to have successful, knowledgable doctors within its database, it will really take off. This idea might not be the easiest pill to swallow (no pun intended...although, let’s be honest, when people write ‘no pun intended’ they usually intended it), but in time, this could be a breakthrough.