COVID-19 has served as a forcing mechanism for change in an industry that has been generally slow to adapt. In a matter of weeks, there was a paradigm shift in care delivery, moving the role and value of digital health from the “sidelines to main street.”
Suddenly, the urgent need to support vulnerable populations forced swift action to facilitate broader access to care – care delivered virtually and via telehealth and remote patient monitoring devices. The headlines may have brought increased attention to the advantages of digital health, but the solutions had already been steadily on the rise for some time. The question is: where do we go from here?
Key Takeaways
- How the pandemic unearthed foundational weaknesses in our ability to deliver virtual
care at scale and what must be done to address the cracks in the system
- Digital health’s progress from a policy, reimbursement and infrastructure standpoint
and the ways in which we can sustain and build on what we’ve learned
- The ways we tackle affordability and accessibility moving forward so both patients and
frontline clinicians benefit
- Key tenets of digital health and what will be needed for solutions to work operationally
and at scale so solutions are available to populations
- What’s on the horizon as we examine the “next normal” in healthcare delivery
