The Covid 19 pandemic caught hospitals by surprise and many of them were overwhelmed by number of patients they had to attend to. In addition, the need for space to accommodate these patients as well as the staff and supplies to manage them also posed a big challenge to these organizations.
Hospital call centers were also stunned by the number of calls about Covid 19 they were receiving. Medial billing staff were also taken back by the sudden surge in patient numbers.
Health related websites were also crushed by members of the public seeking information about this new disease that had taken the world by storm. Other information that was being searched feverishly were the places where one could get tested and treated as well as if these services were covered by their health care insurances.
All these factors led to the acceleration of many initiatives in the digital health space like the provision of telemedicine services. Using electronic information together with telephones or videoconferencing and other telecommunication technology to provide healthcare services was rapidly adopted by many hospitals and even included in some health insurance covers. Health care providers were also trained on how to conduct virtual patient visits. These accessibly and usability of these digital platforms was also improved to ensure that more patients were able to use them.
Healthcare institutions also provided patients with devices with patient monitoring programs. This enabled healthcare staff to keep tabs on them while they were in their homes and act on the information provided by those wearables.
Bots were speedily built to help check symptoms of patients, to interpret them and provide the information to physicians and physician assistants.
Cloud-based services were also quickly developed to allow chats between healthcare workers like nurses with patients in their homes. This triage service enabled the healthcare workers to screen those who needed to come to the hospital and be seen by the doctor and those who did not need to make the trip. This helped reduce the number of patients waiting to be attended in the emergency rooms. Chatting also decreased the number of phone calls to the hospital and left the lines open for more urgent cases.
Patients were also forced to adopt technologies like nutrition apps and weight loss programs to help maintain their health at home.
The Covid 19 pandemic also contributed to the acceleration of the adoption of digital health solutions by other players in the industry. These included those on the administrative side of healthcare provision like scheduling patients, billing insurance companies and data analysis. Automation tools and virtual assistants were also quickly implemented in other players of the healthcare delivery system such as human resource departments. The fact that all this digitalization went hand in hand with the pandemic precautions of social distancing and hands-off approach to ensure employee safety boosted their acceptability.
The Covid 19 pandemic has therefore rapidly transformed the digital healthscape for the better. This is due to the fact that these changes brought about by digitalization are projected to save the healthcare institutions money in the long run. Remote working also enables clinicians to attend to more patients than they would if they were seeing them in person and this saves time as well as all the costs associated with the provision of office medical services. This saving of time and money is also experienced by patients consuming digitized healthcare as they do not have to leave their homes and drive to hospitals and spend time in waiting rooms. Virtual visits also increase the accessibility of healthcare services since patients in remote areas can receive care from specialized medical institutions.