Social Distancing Software: Telemedicine Up 6X, Web Conferencing Up 4.5X, Video Platforms Up 3X

Social distancing means video conferencing and remote work platforms are having a moment. And it’s not just Zoom.

Software review site Trustradius says that interest in telemedicine, typically a sleepy category with low levels of activity, jumped 616% since the COVID-19 pandemic began. Web conferencing is up 445%, and interesting in video platforms is up 327%.

And it’s not just academic interest.

Just one of Vonage’s customers, Doxy.me, says 139,000 new health care providers tried its services in just the last week, with 1.35 million patients using the service for a 701% increase in calls compared to the previous week.

Remote work and collaboration platforms are growing fast thanks to Coronavirus or COVID-19. Social distancing is keeping many of us at home, but we still need to work, we still need prescriptions and medical insight, we still need to communicate.

“In previous weeks, buyers have been highly concerned with building out software for a remote workforce,” Mandi Sandler writes for TrustRadius. “Companies worked quickly to set up antivirus software, VPNs, and remote desktop software tools for secure remote workstations. As more and more companies moved to remote work, we weren’t surprised to see the categories of Web Conferencing, Webinar, Video Platforms, and Video Conferencing Equipment rising steadily.”

The ten top growing software products are all collaboration and communication tools.

Interestingly, given Zoom’s massive growth from 10 million users per month in December to 200 million in March, it’s not the fastest-growing video conferencing platform in terms of TrustRadius views — probably because it already was a category leader. But it currently captures almost 50% of all category interest, trailed by Microsoft Teams at 21.3%.

Here’s the growth in interest that TrustRadius has seen:

1. AnyMeeting: 1209% growth
2. Google Classrooms: 940%
3. Blackboard Collaborate: 753%
4. Zoom: 674%
5. Webex Events: 609%
6. Webex Teams: 505%
7. Zoom Video Webinar: 488%
8. Mitel Micollab: 415%
9. LinkedIn Sales Navigator: 352%
10. WebinarJam: 329%

One category that’s interesting is Mobile App Development, which is getting 199% more traffic and attention now. We’ve seen that Coronavirus boosted mobile app spend to the highest quarterly revenue in history and that e-commerce — often consummated on mobile — is up 25% across the U.S., followed by growth in ad-spend in key mobile categories.

The impact is that companies are scrambling to build mobile apps for customers who are increasingly forced to rely on their devices for a greater and greater share of their commerce, their communication and their entertainment.

And on a business level, the impact is that more and more of our economy is shifting to digital platforms.

As that happens for knowledge work, entertainment, commerce, communication, and other giant swaths of what we do, however, it’s important to remember the hard reality. While much of what we do can go digital, food production, delivery, garbage collection, medical services, and so much more of what we can easily overlook simply cannot go digital.

A friend and former colleague, for instance, broke a tooth this week. No mobile platform will fix that for him.