With the coronavirus outbreak, the healthcare industry is facing an ongoing global health crisis, with infection rates increasing meteorically. At the same time, however, healthcare is seeing something else that is unprecedented: a massive movement towards team-based care and cooperation within the industry. Around the globe, the effects of the coronavirus are keenly felt. There are about 723,732 coronavirus cases reported across the world, which includes 34,000 deaths and 151,831 recovered cases.
To be specific, this pandemic has not been pinned down yet in healthcare, nor does it have an end date in sight. Health practitioners need all the support they can get — access to life-saving ventilators or personal protective equipment (PPE), which is the first line of protection between a sick patient and a clinician on medication. Yet amid these obstacles, healthcare has also broken down barriers that have long been heralded by experts as the biggest challenges in medicine.
Digital healthcare companies have the ability to fill in care gaps and help incumbents in a healthcare plan for, detecting, and treating coronavirus — which may lead to rise even after outbreaks of coronavirus. Telemedicine services are broadening the scope of healthcare practitioners as patients are encouraged to receive treatment from their home comfort. Limiting time spent in public environments is one of the critical pieces of advice to prevent the spread of coronavirus being passed on to the public by health organizations. And so, instead of making trips to the hospital, the government encourages customers to turn to virtual appointments with doctors in nonurgent circumstances. As more people being guided towards virtual treatment, providers of telemedicine are seeing significant upticks in demand.
Companies venting AI-powered remote monitoring systems provide clinicians with the opportunity to keep track of patient safety in real-time from afar. The growing need for medical practitioners to incorporate remote patient monitoring (RPM) systems is also due to the value of social distancing during outbreaks, which is likely to encourage partners to establish RPM solutions. Similar to telemedicine, the need to begin adopting these solutions now could pave the way for increased acceptance among healthcare pros and their patients to move forward.
Health tech companies are introducing warning systems that offer busy physicians access to the latest coronavirus updates without having to interrupt their usual workflows. Since organizations such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) offer regular reports on the coronavirus, healthcare companies need to remain on top of the latest developments. However, this may prove challenging to get this information for inundated organizations that need to move outside of their workflow. This is why it is essential to have timely outbreak alerts directly inserted into EHR systems.
Cloud developers have a chance to build a coronavirus vaccine with researchers and drug manufacturers scrambling. Cloud developers ‘computing capabilities can be used to boost drug production, and it is shown that creative digital health companies have leveraged the software in their efforts to create a coronavirus vaccine.
And while health care providers are turning rapidly to digital technologies now, some healthcare segments, such as home healthcare, need in-person interactions — highlighting some of the drawbacks of health tech in times of crisis. Home health care includes many types of treatment, ranging from assisting with tasks such as bathing and dressing to professional nursing. And while the use of digital technologies like telemedicine may help seniors access virtual appointments, their scope can only be expanded to this level.
