How Technology Is Helping Better Manage Healthcare & Covid-19

 

As it currently stands the words of the year are going to be ‘pandemic’ and ‘coronavirus.’ The worldwide threat of this new illness obviously caused mass hysteria and panic and led to the world trying to find a way to shut down and self-isolate.

Healthcare during a pandemic is obviously vital, both to limit the spread and reduce the suffering. It also has the highest level of risk when you are dealing with something contagious and not fully understood.

As unnerving as these past few weeks have been they have also made us aware of where our medical health system is lacking. Fortunately great minds have been quick to offer solutions. I think it’s important to bring them into the spotlight. This week we’ll be bringing attention to some worthy healthcare warriors.

Let’s start off by looking at HealthTech or Telehealth. This is where healthcare has been moving and there is a good reason why.

We all know how addicted we are to our phones. These devices have become almost like another arm and we use them for so many parts of our lives. We probably also know how busy and over-scheduled today’s workers are. Not everyone has the time to go the doctor when health concerns arise.

This is one of the major reasons for the rise of HealthTech. It expands healthcare and medical services and makes them easier to use and access.

Being able to connect with medical services in situations where self-containment and quarantine are being heavily pushed and hospital areas are high-risk areas of infection is obviously very important. HealthTech is how we allow the sick or not-yet-sick to access the right information.

Look at what Ontario did in our current crisis. Toronto set up a hotline for coronavirus test results, giving people a way to learn their results without leaving their house. For everyone else, services like Dial-a-Doc and Virtual Clinics give people new access to their family doctors, reducing the need and danger for people who need prescription refills or answers to medical concerns.

HealthTech is vital for our future.

For one thing, it is a fantastic tool when it comes to tracking the movement of viruses.

This will prove to be more and more important as climate change affects our environment and turns it into a breeding ground for pathogens.

Look at what we’re facing in 2020 with Coronavirus COVID-19. I think we all know the worldwide reaction to this outbreak was not ideal and the disease spread and damage inflicted could have been reduced if more people had clearly understood the dangers from the get-go.

Johns Hopkins University has a great—and accessible—tracker that lets you really see the damage done by COVID19.

These trackers are essential. We need them so researchers can understand what is going on, medical staff are ready to meet demands and the people at large know what we are facing.

Humans are very adaptive and we come up with great solutions to our problems. By now the dangers of the ER section are well known and this becomes even more obvious during a pandemic. So how do we safely test people when it’s not safe to be close?

Drive-thrus were one of our stranger inventions but it’s hard to imagine life without them now. From grabbing food to taking out cash we’ve worked hard to ensure we can do more from the comfort of our car.

Enter drive-thru healthcare. It may seem like an odd addition to the drive-through lineup but it also serves as the obvious next step in our panicked and busy culture. You’ve likely read about the COVID-19 drive-through testing stations being set up in major areas. First launched in South Korea and now being used worldwide (including the Michael Garron Hospital in Toronto) this system allows for testing that includes a large degree of social separation and client isolation.

In times of pandemic these testing centres are a new way to ensure more people get the answers they need (and fear) in a way that limits physical contact.

We need new ideas like this if we want to survive. Fortunately great minds are constantly coming forward with life-changing concepts that better our world. What innovations are they going to come up with next?

Humans are smart and adaptive and we understand health unlike any other species.

At the same time we occasionally face pandemics and these crises tend to bring out both the best and the worst in us.

It’s interesting to see how technology has changed how we deal with pandemics. We have yet to reach a point where we can fully prevent them but at least we are now more capable of managing them.