2020 has been used up by the global pandemic of COVID-19 and its overwhelming effect on healthcare systems worldwide. The COVID-19 battle has pushed the countries to upgrade their healthcare technologies and other fields of tech. But all of this is happening too fast and while this may be good news during a worldwide lockdown, this dramatic change will surely create a new world after the dust settles.
Pandemics and healthcare crunches in the past have been continuously defeat people and governments all over the world to take public health seriously. But none of them could provide a boost to people to take initiatives. COVID-19 not only provided this boost but also made people realize the value of investments in public health systems, sanitation, disease surveillance, and improving life expectancy. As technology plays a vital role in epidemic responses and public health management, it needs to be powerful enough to save lives of people.
Here is how the COVID-19 is reshaping healthcare:
The recent outburst in the adoption of effective consultation that has established how technology can enable care teams to moderate disease spread, scale with changes in patient volume, and realize efficiencies across the health care system. In the post-covid-19 world, digital healthcare will be the new normal where medical community must prioritize technology that can function across every aspect of the patient experience and support a range of clinical, administrative, and financial workflows.
There will be no need for a long drawn commune for clinical assessment, doctor consultation, or medical opinion. The same can be booked from the comfort of the homes and people can easily avail the benefits. The digital evolution would also contribute in mitigating the problems due to skewed doctor-patient ratio, where the benefits of a medical opinion of a single specialist can reach to the multiple places. The digital healthcare system will also allow India to facilitate healthcare services more swiftly to the African nations where the dearth of the doctors turns out to be a major challenge and all of this will eventually contribute to medical tourism.
Healthcare groups have long waited to implement on-demand virtual care. After COVID-19 kept on spreading the groups had no option but to reboot their systems and enable telemedicine platforms throughout their systems. Every government is also trying to invest in telemedicine to curb the virus. Telemedicine and remote monitoring have seen a huge rise. Doctors and patients are communicating through messages, video conferencing, and phone calls.
Digital revolution in healthcare is essential for efficient healthcare delivery and to prepare themselves for future digital trends. New initiatives to manage the crisis that might sustain even after the pandemic will require strengthened work right now. The merger of the IT sector and healthcare will build a long road towards a actual and new-age healthcare system.
Reconfigured health care delivery models will need to be responsive, with expansion of the digital front door, telehealth and virtual health, and prominence of nontraditional entrants addressing latent and new consumer expectations. Moving forward, recognizing individuality is the ultimate key to making and keeping successful patient connections, particularly those in telehealth.
New normal is forcing all industries to suddenly look at things differently to find new ways to achieve tasks ranging from work to daily living. For manufacturers, it means pivoting to make them an automaker Ford is making PPE, while General Motors is building ventilators. Nowhere has this need to innovate been more urgent than in health care. The need to prevent transmission of a highly contagious virus and the need to deliver hands-on care are inherently in conflict.
Healthcare practices should maintain emergency management plans for practice operations that could include pandemic coordinators, risk communications, essential functions and delegation of authority, human resources, essential records management, testing and training, and reconstitution planning. They may choose to implement shift work to minimize cross-contamination of teams. In the event a staff member gets sick, contact tracing and active testing may become the new norm.
