Pandemic possibilities: healthcare reform amid COVID-19

September 2020 | FEATURE | SECTOR ANALYSIS

Financier Worldwide Magazine

September 2020 Issue

Extreme circumstances often beget extraordinary changes. The emergence of coronavirus (COVID-19), for instance, has caused major disruption to a multitude of industries, and, at the same time, forced them to rethink how they conduct their business.

One industry that has been particularly hard hit by the pandemic is healthcare – a sphere already subject to systematic changes, driven by trends such as an aging demographic, the explosion in healthcare data and an increasingly complex administrative infrastructure.

“While the most obvious impact of COVID-19 has been on the frontline, thousands of elective surgeries have been delayed and the backlog of routine services will take months and years to unwind,” says Alexander de Carvalho, chief investment officer and co-founder of PUBLIC. “Remote consultation capabilities will redefine how care is provided in the future and as a result health pathways, chronic disease management and vulnerable patient treatment plans will be permanently transformed.”

In the view of Dr Vincent Grasso, global practice lead of healthcare & life sciences at IPsoft, the pandemic has accelerated long gestating change. “As we have been moving toward a decentralised healthcare delivery model over the past 20 years, the pandemic has accelerated this transition to its end point: patients receiving complex care at home. “Fortunately, healthcare workers are committed to helping their patients and will make the necessary adjustments to deliver the highest level of care available, while exploring the use of innovations required to meet new challenges.”

Flattening the curve

Given its status as a $3 trillion market, it comes as no surprise that healthcare has the close attention of a host of Big Tech companies – Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Apple, among others – each of which sees the pandemic as an opportunity to further its own healthcare agenda.

According to CB Insights’ analysis ‘Big Tech in Healthcare’, Big Tech companies are looking to leverage their scale, user base, technology and brand to modernise the healthcare experience. “Many solutions have been developed by Big Tech and others to help screen patients for indicators of COVID-19 at home,” explains Dr Grasso. “Companies have quickly corralled resources to try and reduce person-to-person interaction to ‘flatten the curve’.

“Post-pandemic, the pace of change across the healthcare industry is expected to be prolific, with technological innovation key to reform.”

“Cognitive agents have been deployed so that whether sheltered-in-place or quarantined at home, any member of the general public is able to reach an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered cognitive assistant by voice call or a browser to receive an assessment of risk, as well as additional information about the pandemic,” he continues. “Once an individual engages with the assistant in conversation, they are assessed on their current symptoms and risk factors based on the latest information from the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO) without putting themselves or others in danger.”

In Mr de Carvalho’s experience, a major challenge has been the lack of reliable and structured patient data. “The time it took to identify and notify those vulnerable patients who were advised to proactively shield at home took many weeks when it could have taken days,” he asserts. “A truly structured electronic health record, interoperable services and better data-sharing agreements would transform public health decision-making data and greatly accelerate responses.

“The Big Tech response has been variable when it comes to donating technology and solutions in the fight against COVID-19,” he adds. “Efforts have been well-documented but many smaller technology companies have developed brilliant solutions over the past few months, leveraging their size to adapt in far more agile, targeted ways, unencumbered by balance sheets and bureaucracy.”

Watershed

Post-pandemic, the pace of change across the healthcare industry is expected to be prolific, with technological innovation key to reform. For many, the likelihood is that the COVID-19 era will prove to be a watershed moment.

“What this pandemic has shown is that the healthcare industry, which is typically very risk-averse, can be made more dynamic through technological investments,” says Dr Grasso. “Leveraging AI not only has value in screening patients during a pandemic, but also in tracking illness, managing inventory and pushing innovations, such as ventilators capable of supporting multiple people. Looking ahead to a post COVID-19 environment, within a few years I expect that patients will get a lot more practice interacting with conversational AI assistants as they engage with their regular healthcare needs.”

For some commentators, healthcare has transformed more over the past few months than it has in years. “The number of partnerships formed, new technologies and solutions developed, and new experiences that have been had has been incredible,” notes Mr de Carvalho. “Together, these will hopefully drive momentum that carries on in the months that come. However, there should be a constant need to test, iterate and improve in healthcare, and this will still require leadership when COVID-19 is in the rear-view mirror.”

Fraser Tennant