Teladoc (TDOC -2.09%) is making progress at disrupting the healthcare industry. In this video clip from "The 5," recorded on Nov. 9, Fool.com contributors Trevor Jennewine and Demitri Kalogeropoulos discuss promising aspects of Teladoc's business that imply a long runway for growth.
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Trever Jennewine: My question is, name another company that's doing something disruptive? It could be with artificial intelligence or anything else. Name the company that you think has a lot of potential that's disrupting a market? Demitri, let's start with you.
Demitri Kalogeropoulos: Sure. Trevor, that was just interesting to hear you say Lemonade as an insurance company/artificial intelligence, it's just not something I might have thought a couple of years ago make sense, but it does. They're doing some great things. The ticker that came to mind for me is Teladoc, TDOC. Because it sounds like they're doing some disruptive stuff, in the same vein as, as eliminated this is in Teladoc's using technology to digitize parts of doctor visit process.
For example, our quick consultation or a question for a doctor can be answered with a video call instead of a visit to bricks and mortar office that's got all these inefficiencies and everything, so of course, growth today is slowing down compared to a year ago when everyone literally was looking for ways to do their health visits remotely.
But Teladoc's business still looks great. Sales were up 81% in the third quarter and what's exciting, I guess, about this business to me is that there's so much room, I think for them to disrupt so many aspects of the traditional healthcare visit model and if you think about just so many of the friction points in there that impact so many people.
I think that's long wait time is just an example, but it's just so I don't know if you've gotten the same experience I've if I go to the doctor, is just amazing how antiquated I feel like so many of the things are wireless the sign-in thing, the waiting in the lobby, the always being half an hour behind time and the doctor is always so you can't do anything about that.
It just makes so much more sense to queue these doctors up that way, so I think they can move a lot of, a lot of pain points there and I think that's great news for shareholders because it means there's a lot of good growth avenues available and cool thing there is that I think a lot of the growth avenues aren't even something we could really, I could even picture right now I think over time those are going to develop and we're going to be surprised by how many aspects of healthcare can be done at home basis with all this new technology coming out wearables that can test new vital signs, blood, oxygenation levels, and who knows what? In a couple of years, so I think I think Teladoc has got some cool work ahead of it.
Jennewine: Yeah, I think that's a great pick, we've already talked about Teladoc a lot, but the potential to make things more convenient and even to cut costs. Telemedicine has a lot of promise. I think the company mentioned in its SEC filings that in 2020, the average wait time between when you requested visit and actually got to see a general practitioner I think was 10 minutes. It takes me longer than 10 minutes to drive to the doctor right now.
