An Expert Interview with Joel E. Barthelemy, Chairman and CEO of GlobalMed Holdings, LLC
The U.S. faces a critical provider shortage and a rapidly aging population. Patients in rural parts of the country must choose between costly travel to distant specialty centers or going untreated. In some cases, these decisions can mean life or death. Video-only telehealth platforms can’t deliver the diagnostic data specialists need to make informed remote care decisions.
GlobalMed offers a different approach. As the world leader in evidence-based digital health solutions, the company deploys integrated capabilities that deliver clinical-grade diagnostics to rural clinics, austere locations, and disaster zones.
We sat down with CEO Joel Barthelemy to learn how.
Every company believes their products and capabilities are unique and given that the U.S. government has made a substantial investment in improving rural health outcomes there are now more companies coming forward to help solve access to care challenges. Joel, I think I’ll start with this simple question – what makes GlobalMed’s approach to healthcare so different than everyone else’s?
Joel: Great first question, thank you for asking. As simply as I can put it, the GlobalMed special sauce, our secret recipe as it were, is evidence – patient data. Over the past twenty-four years, my team and I have spent our time developing solutions that enable patient data capture, sharing and integration capabilities to help remote providers make informed decisions. Anyone can build a video teleconferencing system. What makes us different is that we have tied in capabilities that help providers and patients capture evidence – rhythm strips, sonograms, derm images, auscultations – to then share with providers and specialists to act. Our eNcounter platform empowers continuity of care.
I would add that if I were king for a day, digital health would be the only approach to healthcare. This wouldn’t be a niche field, like RPM or telehealth, it would be how every single appointment is handled moving forward. Patients at primary care appointments would have their data captured and integrated synchronously for future review and continuity of care. The benefit of our approach is that each one of these appointments could be elevated to a specialty virtual health appointment on the spot, decreasing the wait time for the next appointment. Right then, the primary care provider can access the network, find the on call virtual health specialist, bring them into the consult, allow them to review and request additional patient data and make an informed decision on the spot.
Ok. I think that helps from a high level, but I’d like to pose a couple of anecdotal scenarios and questions to help me better understand:
Joel: Sounds great.
Q 1: A Veteran in rural Wyoming is having chest pain at 2 AM. The nearest cardiologist is 180 miles away. How does GlobalMed’s technology turn that nightmare into a survival story?
Joel Barthelemy: That scenario plays out every single night across America, and it’s exactly why we built what we built. Our solutions deployed in rural clinics and VA facilities aren’t glorified webcams. They’re immediate “diagnostic-and-decision” tools that augment on site care with reach back support to any provider in the network. Within minutes, chest pain patients can be connected to a cardiologist who’s receiving real-time, clinical-grade ECG data, listening to high-definition heart sounds through our FDA-cleared digital stethoscope HD integration, and viewing high-definition examination footage that reveals what no video call ever could.
The provider can diagnose acute myocardial infarction, initiate time-sensitive protocols, and, if needed, coordinate helicopter transport—often before that Veteran would have even made it halfway to the nearest hospital with the appropriate specialist. We give remote physicians the same diagnostic confidence they’d have standing at the patient’s bedside, changing healthcare delivery for both patient and provider.
Q2: Every telehealth company claims they’re “changing healthcare.” What makes GlobalMed’s virtual care platform so critical that it’s trusted by the Department of Defense (DoD), and leading healthcare systems?
Joel Barthelemy: The Defense Health Agency inside the DoD requires telehealth solutions that deliver verifiable, evidence-based medical data in high-security, zero-failure environments. Our integrated digital health ecosystems combine military-grade encryption, ISO 13485–certified and FDA-cleared biomedical devices, and redundant communication systems that operate in austere conditions where most other platforms would collapse.
Our systems have helped save lives in countless everyday healthcare delivery situations and during natural disasters where internet infrastructure and normal care models were destroyed. During past hurricanes and other disasters, many rapid response teams have deployed GlobalMed solutions because our technology works when everything else fails. We’re proud to offer proven mission-critical performance in the world’s most demanding environments.
Q3: Rural healthcare is collapsing. Small hospitals are closing. Specialists are concentrated in cities. How are GlobalMed’s solutions solving America’s healthcare access crisis right now?
Joel Barthelemy: Let me give you a concrete example. In the Texas Panhandle, people waited up to a year to see a dermatologist and drove four hours to appointments. Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center deployed our platform in rural communities, and within weeks, wait times dropped from one year to one week. We’re not flying in dermatologists. Instead, our diagnostic cameras capture clinical-grade skin images, and a dermatologist in Lubbock reviews them remotely during virtual consultations—improving skin cancer detection and enabling earlier treatment while eliminating travel burdens.
That model scales. Copper Queen Hospital in Arizona saved over a half million dollars in the first six months by adding telecardiology through our platform, eliminating unnecessary patient transfers to Phoenix, and—by adding additional specialties—helped move the hospital from operating in the red to operating in the black, while reducing the traditional disparities in care for their rural location.
Today, the Rural Health Transformation Program is designed to scale this exact model: diagnose patients earlier, route them to the right level of care (or keep them local when appropriate), and improve outcomes without wasting taxpayer dollars. The federal government is investing $50 billion over five years to support deployments like this.
What makes this work isn’t just video calls; it’s capturing diagnostic data at the point of care and transmitting it securely to specialists wherever they are. We’re giving rural providers the tools to deliver the same quality care you’d get in a major city.
Q4: AI and telehealth are buzzwords everyone’s throwing around. What’s GlobalMed actually doing with artificial intelligence that improves patient outcomes instead of just sounding impressive?
Joel Barthelemy: We incorporate AI that helps clinicians work smarter. Our platform includes AI virtual triage that analyzes patient-reported symptoms and routes them to the appropriate care level automatically. A patient with chest pain gets escalated immediately, while someone with a minor rash gets scheduled for routine dermatology.
We also have an AI-powered symptom checker integrated into our direct-to-patient software. Before a virtual visit starts, patients answer questions, and the system captures baseline data. By the time the provider joins the consultation, they already have structured information instead of starting from scratch. Then, once they’re in the appointment, the provider can use voice-activated AI to generate notes, so the practitioner can deliver more personal care without worrying about documentation.
We have also incorporated an amazing behavioral health capability into our platform that is going to transform care diagnosis and empower timely care delivery. This AI is designed to analyze patient speech to identify multiple diseases, including Alzheimer’s, Huntington’s and depression. As we have previously stated, we are short of specialists like behavioral health providers and sadly, there is a stigma with reaching out for mental health care. Through our direct to patient platform, patients can now access discrete care and start the healing process sooner.
The key difference is integration. Our AI embeds directly in the workflow, integrating data from the medical devices and supporting over 55+ modalities of care. When a physician conducts a telecardiology visit with our TotalECG device, the system provides real-time clinical decision support while the cardiologist reviews the 12-lead data. That’s augmented intelligence at the point of care, during actual patient encounters.
Q5: Healthcare executives are drowning in numerous vendors promising “digital transformation.” Why should hospital systems, DSOs, and government healthcare agencies choose GlobalMed over the hundreds of competitors?
Joel Barthelemy: Healthcare executives see endless vendor pitches promising transformation. What separates us is our track record. We’ve been doing this since 2002, and our technology has been deployed across some of the most challenging environments: VA hospitals, military bases, oil rigs, correctional facilities, disaster and combat zones.
The Department of Veterans Affairs didn’t choose GlobalMed because of our marketing. They chose us because we listened to their needs and delivered measurable results. When your environment involves security requirements, connectivity challenges, or mission-critical care, you need vendors who’ve proven they can handle that complexity. Our platform earned the Defense Health Agency’s Authority to Operate (ATO) on DoD networks.
For healthcare executives, here’s what matters: we reduce patient transfer costs, expand specialist access without recruitment expenses, and integrate diagnostic data directly into your EHR, PACS, or HIE. When something goes wrong at 3 AM, and you need support, you’re calling an American company that’s been solving these problems for over 24 years.
The Bottom Line
While competitors are still figuring out how to make video calls work securely and reliably, GlobalMed is delivering diagnostic-grade virtual care with evidence to urban, rural, and austere environments—enabling programs like TeleStroke that connect rural emergency departments to neurologists in minutes, and expanding specialist access to rural communities that would otherwise face hours-long transfers. We are revolutionizing how care is delivered and believe the digital approach that we have enabled is the only way we are going to close the provider gap and reduce the ever-increasing cost of care.
With over 24 years of deployments across 60 countries and 100+ million consultations completed, GlobalMed has built a track record that separates operational healthcare technology from pilot programs and promises.
About GlobalMed
GlobalMed is the world leader in evidence-based digital health solutions, delivering an integrated portfolio of telemedicine hardware, virtual care software, and clinical-grade diagnostic ecosystems. Trusted by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, the Department of Defense, and healthcare organizations in more than 60 countries, GlobalMed enables high-reliability virtual care in clinics, hospitals, and austere settings worldwide. Veteran-owned and led, the company specializes in deploying mission-critical technology that helps clinicians make confident, timely decisions when access, distance, and conditions are at their toughest.
