Digital Health, Healthcare and the COVID-19 – Transforming through this crisis

COVID-19 outbreak has shaken the entire world, disrupted many industries nd lives and moving quickly, so quickly that writing this article would require new updates frequently. This enormous event in our lifetime will transform the world, the way we lead our lives and restructure the global economic order. What 9/11 did to the increased scrutiny of travelers and passengers around the world, COVID-19 pandemic is set to the same to the healthcare. The ‘new normal’ is not only transforming healthcare but reinventing the fundamental ways citizens receive healthcare as healthcare systems get overburdened with capacity issues. We will explore how healthcare providers, governments and other stakeholders are battling the virus around the world and the implications it will have to the future of heath-tech.

Healthcare & Hospitals Digital Transformation Initiatives

70% of the Digital Transformation Programs fail around the world, according to a McKinsey research report. While healthcare has always lagged behind amongst other sectors, COVID-19 is transforming it rapidly and will also see successful digital transformation initiatives. The thing different this time is urgency and the entire organization is empowered with concerted efforts to transform themselves rather than silos or pockets of the organization innovating. The crisis affects everyone in one way or the other be it contracting the virus or having their jobs compromised. The leadership or the C-Suite understands the importance of pivoting and transformation to stay relevant and purposeful which is what we are seeing across many hospitals around the world.

The healthcare industry, CIOs and IT functions around the world will spend increased budgets on implementing Electronic Health Records (EHR) and other digital solutions by increasing automation and use of high tech innovation solutions.

Ecosystem of Healthcare & Technology Giants Collaboration

According to NHSX chief @Matthew Gould, National Health Service – NHS England is inviting the tech giants (AWS, Google, MSFT) to build a data driven platform and collectively harness insights under NHSX. NHSX is a Futures Initiative / Innovation Lab of NHS exploring the future of healthcare.

The data coming in would be from call centers, tests result data, current occupancy levels at hospitals, current capacity of A&E (Accidents & Emergency) departments, wait times, lengths of stay for coronavirus patients. The data would be gleaned and presented in dashboards for decision making and capacity management of the healthcare system so timely interventions can be made to mitigate the crisis.

Rise of Hackathons & Open Innovation

The network of teams around the world gathering to brainstorm collaboratively and making use of design thinking and agile methodologies to innovate. MIT’s COVID-19 Challenge did a recent hackathon to build quick prototypes of respirators so they could be experimented, clinically trialed to be scaled and deployed at hospitals around US. Hospitals will be collaborating more with the startups incubators and digital health-tech disruptors.  

Mobile Applications

A huge part of the China’s response plan to coronavirus has been the widespread use of mobile applications to disseminate verified information and constant messaging with the citizens to keep them up to date with the real time developments. WeChat and Weibo, which are China’s super apps for citizens to do not just daily routine purchases but also their social platforms, have been the main players helping the govt’s efforts

Hospitals using Exponential Technologies 

Technology will flip healthcare from scarcity to abundance as @Peter Diamandis from @Singularity University has written in his book Abundance. Hospitals are battling the virus by experimenting, deploying exponential technologies like AI, ML, Chat Bots, Robots to support the influx of patients suffering from COVID -19. 

Rise of AI Tech 

Zhongnan Hospital in China uses an AI-driven CT scan interpreter that identifies Covid-19 when radiologists aren’t available. Florida’s Tampa General Hospital deployed an AI system at its entrances to intercept individuals with potential Covid-19 symptoms from visiting patients

Telehealth

Telehealth is being used across the world to ensure only the right patients come to the hospitals not only helping the healthcare systems manage their capacities but also playing a pivotal role in flattening the curve with people getting online remote counselling from doctors and not moving around spreading the virus. Artificial Intelligence AI based systems can be an initial stop before getting a face time with a doctor which would create large data sets for further analytics. The Partners Covid-19 Screener provides chat interface asking patients with a series of questions based on content from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and based on the results will redirect the person to the required health care. 

Contactless healthcare

With increased focus on hygiene and safety precautions against coronavirus, the need for contactless health solutions is rising exponentially. China’s Wuhan Wuchang Hospital established a smart field hospital staffed largely by robots. Another case study is of Chinese technology company Baidu developed a no-contact infrared sensor system to quickly single out individuals with a fever, even in crowds. Intelligent robots developed at Boston Dynamics and MIT to deploy in COVID surge clinics and inpatient wards to perform tasks (obtaining vital signs or delivering medication). 

Rise of Wearables

What started of as ‘fun’ workout applications in Smart Phones, Smart watches and other wearables in the form of Fitbit, the future of medical wearables and mobile sensors has a huge potential for patient and disease management. Especially with the incoming of 5G powering speed and data throughputs will allow continuous monitoring of Vital Signs that would produce large amounts of datasets that can be analysed through AI & ML and connected to other healthcare providers. Bahranian govt Information & e Government Authority introduces wristbands (electronic bracelets) connected via bluetooth to an application called “BE AWARE” which tracks new and existing corona virus cases requiring GPS location enablement at all times. Ministry of Health officials may randomly send picture requests to which self-isolating individuals must respond with a photo that clearly shows their face and bracelet.

But wearables should be trialed, tested and be driven by use-cases and evidence of impact – both for patients and clinicians and not just for the sake of extracting physiological data.

Data Privacy & Ethics

The proliferation of Technologies also raises serious concerns about data privacy which is where GDPR (Europe) and CCPA (US) compliance will be crucial in healthcare going forward for all health tech startups and hospitals around the world.

Any healthcare at core has to be human centered, grounded in empathy, not only just focused in solving the needs of the patients but also going one step beyond in putting a smile on their faces, creating moments of magic as the humanity goes through this pandemic. 

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