COVID-19 Is Changing Healthcare Forever (Even As Business Gets Back To Normal)
The business world had a tumultuous 2020. But once vaccines start rolling out, things will likely return to normal pretty quickly.
The same, however, probably can’t be said of healthcare. COVID-19 is transforming the sector in ways that people simply couldn’t imagine before the crisis struck.
So what effects has the coronavirus had? And why might medicine be changing forever?
COVID-19 Accelerated Telemedicine By Over Ten Years
Most healthcare professionals believed that it would take at least another decade for telemedicine to go mainstream. The technology was there, but the willingness to put it into action wasn’t.
But according to some former chiefs of staff, such as Chris Jennings, that’s all changed. In 2021, telemedicine is at the stage that people predicted it would reach by 2030. In other words, we’ve had a decade of telemedicine progress in the space of just a few months.
The reasons for this are obvious, of course. Telemedicine is infinitely safer than going to the doctor’s office right now. And both patients and medical professionals are demanding it.
The Growth Of Assisted Living
In the 2000s, nursing homes reached their zenith. Medical professionals concentrated older patients in palliative facilities designed to ease their passing. It was an efficient model, but not a particularly attractive one for many older adults.
With COVID-19 and the way that the virus has torn its way through nursing homes, it’s also a clear and present danger.
For that reason, we’re seeing vast growth in the assisted living market. Instead of sending older adults to a central facility, keeping them at home is now the aim of the game.
Pulling this off isn’t as challenging as it first might seem. Getting equipment into people’s homes at low cost is now a real possibility, owing to new rental markets.
For instance, a hospital bed for rent is far more affordable than buying one outright. And the same goes for dialysis machines and ventilators.
The demand for home health aids is going through the roof. And many nursing homes are considering whether they really need massive premises anymore or if they could operate remote teams instead.
Drugs Made In Domestic Factories
At the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis, the healthcare industry was very international. Pharma companies produced in locations where they could churn out drugs for the least amount of money possible.
Now, though, healthcare has become strategic - and there’s a real need to produce all the medicines that people need domestically.
Just look at what happened in the EU at the start of the crisis. Countries limited the supply of COVID-fighting drugs across borders, putting temporary bans on the export of certain products. It wasn’t pretty.
Health Preparedness
Some people predicted that we’d have a pandemic sooner or later, but nobody really wanted to take the possibility seriously.
Now that it’s happened, we’re likely to see an era of health preparedness. Coronavirus caught governments and public health massively off-guard at the start of 2020 and made them look quite inept. They’ll be keen to make sure that that doesn’t happen again.
