Executive Interview: Joel E. Barthelemy, CEO of GlobalMed

GlobalMed is the world leader in evidence-based digital health solutions. Trusted by the White House Medical Unit, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, and healthcare organizations across 60+ countries, GlobalMed has pioneered the integrated telemedicine platforms that deliver clinical-grade care to patients in the world’s most challenging environments.

At BD Health, we understand the many barriers that prevent people from accessing the treatment they need and deserve. We sat down with GlobalMed CEO Joel E. Barthelemy to explore how clinical-grade telemedicine technology is transforming access to addiction treatment, and why evidence-based virtual care may be one of the most powerful tools in the fight against the opioid crisis.

Q: Methadone maintenance often requires a period of daily clinic visits, which can be one of the most significant barriers keeping people out of treatment. How can GlobalMed’s telemedicine technology support opioid treatment programs in reaching patients who simply cannot make that daily commitment?

A: The daily observed dosing requirement creates a real retention problem. Patients with jobs, childcare, unreliable transportation, or significant mental health needs often drop out not because they don’t want treatment but because the logistics break down. That’s the gap telemedicine can help close.

What GlobalMed’s platform supports specifically in an OTP context is the clinical work that surrounds the dispensing visit. For example, counseling sessions, behavioral health assessments, and physician evaluations for take-home dose eligibility could all happen through the eNcounter® platform without requiring a separate clinic trip. A counselor conducting a session remotely has the same documentation tools, secure communication, and access to patient records they would have in person. A physician evaluating whether a patient has demonstrated the stability required for expanded take-home privileges can do that assessment virtually, which matters in a regulatory environment that has increasingly recognized telehealth’s role in OTP care since the pandemic-era flexibilities.

For patients who face the highest barriers to daily attendance, reducing the number of required in-person visits for everything except the dispensing itself can be the difference between staying in treatment and leaving.

Q: Many people with opioid use disorder live in rural areas with no accessible treatment program nearby. How is GlobalMed helping extend the reach of evidence-based addiction treatment to underserved regions?

A: OTPs are disproportionately concentrated in urban and suburban areas, which means patients in rural communities often face a choice between traveling hours for treatment or not accessing it at all. Buprenorphine prescribing through telehealth has expanded access in some areas, but for patients who need methadone, the infrastructure gap is harder to close.

What GlobalMed’s platform supports is building that infrastructure in the places where it currently doesn’t exist. Community health centers, federally qualified health centers, and rural clinics can deploy GlobalMed’s telemedicine stations and connect patients to addiction medicine physicians and counselors remotely. The physician conducting a take-home eligibility assessment or the counselor running a behavioral health session doesn’t need to be in the same building, which matters significantly in regions where recruiting addiction medicine specialists is its own ongoing challenge.

We’ve seen this model work in rural primary care through Coplin Health in West Virginia, which uses GlobalMed’s Transportable Exam Backpacks to deliver care across communities where building permanent facilities wasn’t viable. The same approach applies to addiction medicine. Getting the technology into rural clinics gives patients access to the clinical relationship required for stable treatment, without the daily logistics barrier that ends treatment before it has a chance to work.

Q: Patients in opioid treatment programs often live with co-occurring conditions, including Hepatitis C, HIV, cardiovascular disease, and serious mental health disorders. How does GlobalMed’s platform support the kind of integrated, whole-person care these patients need?

A: Patients managing opioid use disorder alongside HIV, Hepatitis C, cardiovascular disease, or serious mental illness are typically receiving care from multiple providers who aren’t communicating with each other. A medication change from a psychiatrist that interacts with a buprenorphine protocol, or an infectious disease treatment that affects liver function and methadone metabolism, can create clinical risk when those providers are working from separate records.

GlobalMed’s eNcounter platform integrates with most major EHR systems, which means that when a patient connects to an infectious disease specialist or psychiatrist through a telemedicine visit, that provider has access to the same clinical record rather than a partial picture. For behavioral health specifically, tools like Canary Speech enable objective screening for depression, anxiety, and cognitive changes during virtual consultations, giving counselors and psychiatrists data that supplements patient self-reporting in a population where stigma often makes accurate self-disclosure difficult.

The logistics matter too. Patients managing multiple conditions often struggle to attend separate appointments at separate locations. When counseling, psychiatric evaluation, and specialist consultations can happen through the same platform without additional transportation requirements, treatment adherence improves not because the care is better in theory but because the practical barriers are reduced.

Q: Stigma is one of the most powerful forces keeping people away from opioid treatment. How can telemedicine help address the stigma barrier that prevents so many from seeking the help they need?

A: One of the most concrete ways telehealth addresses stigma is simply by removing visibility. When a patient can have an initial consultation from home, they don’t have to walk into a building associated with addiction treatment, sit in a waiting room, or explain to anyone why they’re there. For people who are still weighing whether to seek help at all, that first private conversation with a provider can lower the threshold enough to get them through it.

For patients who are already in treatment or transitioning to a clinic-based program, GlobalMed’s self-service kiosks address the in-person version of the same problem. Patients check in and initiate their visit through a touchscreen without interacting with front desk staff, which matters for people who experience significant anxiety or shame around their treatment visits. The visit itself stays private and the documentation is protected under GlobalMed’s HIPAA-compliant platform, which also holds U.S. Defense Health Agency Authority to Operate, one of the most rigorous security frameworks in healthcare.

Stigma doesn’t fully disappear because care is delivered virtually, but reducing the number of moments where a patient has to publicly identify themselves as someone seeking addiction treatment removes real barriers that keep people from starting and staying in care.

Q: The opioid crisis has been particularly devastating for veterans. GlobalMed already serves the VA extensively. What does that experience mean for addiction treatment programs serving veteran populations?

A:The VA experience matters here for specific reasons, not just because of scale. Veterans accessing care through the VA often present with complex behavioral health needs alongside opioid use disorder, including PTSD, traumatic brain injury, and chronic pain from service-related injuries. Building technology that performs reliably in that clinical environment means GlobalMed’s platform has been stress-tested against some of the most medically and psychologically complex patient populations in the country.

For OTP programs serving veterans, that experience translates directly to operational readiness. The VA has deployed GlobalMed solutions across nearly 2,500 endpoints nationwide, including telemedicine stations and transportable exam units used for behavioral health, specialty care, and remote consultations in rural VA facilities.

The operational knowledge that comes from that deployment, around behavioral health workflows, rural access logistics, and serving patients with significant trust barriers toward healthcare systems, applies directly to what BD Health is trying to accomplish with veteran patients in its programs.

GlobalMed is the world leader in evidence-based digital health solutions, providing integrated telemedicine hardware and software ecosystems trusted by the White House Medical Unit, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Department of Defense, and healthcare organizations in over 60 countries. As a veteran-owned company, GlobalMed specializes in delivering clinical-grade virtual care in the world’s most demanding healthcare environments.

Last updated: October 2026