Is Medical Research on a new level after COVID-19?

The worldwide crisis such as wars and other catastrophes compels society to think and act differently for a little while, which features organizational actions and advancements that need not be at a halt with the end of a global crisis and should be authorized to portray a much greater role in the future.

In a similar manner, the global pandemic of coronavirus disease (COVID-19), despite all the harm and bad happenings, showed huge advancements in the field of medical research and the entire healthcare infrastructure.

The excessive pressure on the healthcare industry due to the Covid-19 pandemic has definitely turned out well as the medical research has developed appropriate virus control practices, thousands of healthcare organizations, nursing homes, and patient rehabilitation centers have been developed and managed by well-experienced and skilled medical practitioners across the world.

The global crisis of Covid-19 has enhanced the global health infrastructure by driving both the private and the government sector to induce impromptu expenditure on Covid-19 related services. The governments and regulatory authorities all across the world have spent hundreds of billions only on hospital equipment, while private healthcare establishments invested heavily in huge volumes for crucial medical supplies and reorganizing hospital infrastructure to build quarantine and isolation facilities.

These all were unplanned and unanticipated investments for Covid-19, but it is projected to improve the healthcare industry in the long run. Whilst the global pandemic of Covid-19 has influenced the world in detrimental ways, it has brought about an avalanche of productive changes as well, comprising the rapid adoption of digital health technologies across the world.

The duration of the pandemic has witnessed an enormous eruption of digital innovations and encouraged the need for societies to digitalize. As per the latest report published by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services in July 2020, in the month of April, around 43.5% of Medicare primary care visits were performed via telehealth.

It is not surprising that technologies like telehealth are rising during the last few months, and several health plans are integrating it in different ways. Some systems, such as Kaiser Permanente, have been using telehealth regularly for many years now, and employers specifically bigger employers have been adding it to analyse at a rapid snip, employing it to upsurge workers’ comfort and convenience and to eliminate additional costs.

The worldwide pandemic of Covid-19 has also introduced the global healthcare system to new and well-recognized challenges. Whilst advanced technologies and healthcare infrastructure can be established in a short period of time, it is not attainable to upscale healthcare workers overnight, particularly with a healthcare workforce that is already strained to its limit.

With reference to that, the worldwide catastrophe also encouraged frontline healthcare workers, across the world, to gain knowledge and digital literacy that will further assist their digital health adoption process, and thus the related education need to start at nursing and medical schools.

Other than that, another bigger change in the healthcare system across the world is that digital healthcare systems are now taken more earnestly in both medical education as well as in practice.

In addition to that, it has also brought about considerable changes in the way medical care is delivered to patients across the world from intense to community setting, from individual-focused care to patient-centered medical care.

Although the sudden outburst of the pandemic has also highlighted a major missing link in the preparedness of the healthcare industry, that is the requirement for near real-time and updated availability of trusted information.

Furthermore, in these bizarre times, clinical trials have observed numerous uncertainties and wide-ranging challenges enveloping a broad range of activities comprising prioritizing patient safety amidst the pandemic, allowing and employing new members into trials, data assemblage and management, and intervening delivery. In support of that, as per Kevin Sheth, chief of neurocritical care and emergency neurology at Yale University, USA, physical distancing to protect patient and researcher safety has been one of the major disruptions to clinical trial research during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Paradoxically, the global pandemic has considerably signified globally that it is possible to keep in touch and interchange documents, data, and information without necessarily moving people with an associated waste of time, and elevated costs.

Also, it is appreciative of the widespread use of already present digital communications, technologies, goods and information exchange, appropriate medical assistance, and several other work activities have been maintained, even in almost complete numbness of all physical human mobility across the globe.