How the pandemic has accelerated healthcare innovation
Why It Matters
Healthcare has fundamentally changed in the wake of COVID-19, with many providers reaching up to 90 percent virtual encounters. But adapting to virtual service delivery is only one of the many important ways healthcare innovation — which has historically been sluggish — has accelerated during this time.
Many have remarked that more innovation has transpired in the past several weeks than in decades prior. And indeed, that has been my experience in the sector I work in — healthcare. I lead the Futures team for a 112-year-old Canadian non-profit organization that primarily delivers care to aging adults in their homes, some 20,000 times a day. Over the past several weeks, much of our work “future proofing” our organization has been accelerated, because needs and constraints of our clients, staff and partners changed in an instant when the pandemic began. New models of delivering care that reduce the risk of personal contact and keep people in their homes became one of the highest demand concepts, and we have been fast tracking our innovation pipeline to meet these needs.
Here are some early reflections on what I’ve learned through all of this about barriers to innovation in healthcare — or lack thereof.
Barriers to (health) innovation have been smashed
To start, nearly every health professional opened up alternative, digital channels to engage patients, many reaching upwards of 90 percent virtual encounters in a matter of days. In many cases this was enabled by rapid policy changes to allow reimbursement of virtual “visits,” or even free access to clinicians sponsored by companies or by the health system funders — mental health consults, for instance.
Health workers’ capacity had to rapidly increase, too. There’s been cross-licensing of clinicians across state borders (in the US). Clinicians have come out of retirement. Medical and nursing students have gone into the field instead of finishing their last term. Organizations such as the hospitals and home care agencies have “lent” their staff to crisis areas such as nursing homes. Non-healthcare professionals have begun upskilling to take on healthcare duties (flight attendants, military and postal workers, for instance). Non-essential care has been cancelled to free up capacity. And make-shift hospitals have been built at arenas or in hotels in a matter of days.
Health data availability, transparency and liquidity has also (finally) arrived. Before COVID, much of the healthcare data out there was locked in prisons, only accessible or interrogatable by a small number of clinicians, administrators or researchers. Now, real-time data generation and dissemination has emerged at a whole new level; for example, data is being created through new tools (such as apps), it is moving with much less friction across various silos of healthcare (such as from a doctor’s office to public health), and is being packaged, mined and analyzed in creative ways by a much wider set of players, many of which are analysts who are not healthcare people. This data liberation has enabled tech giants, startups, and governments to build and roll out tools in days, at scale, and actively refining them daily or hourly.
COVID-19 testing has gone from days to hours for results, and now, to real-time via results produced instantly at the ‘point of collection.’ Testing access has expanded from a small number of specialized sites (like hospital labs) to drive-through testing, kiosks at multiple retail or other locations, and, soon self-tests administered in your home. Modalities are expanding, too, beyond swabbing (which requires specimens to be collected and then sent to a centralized lab for processing) and toward tests that use imaging, temperature or even apps, based on ubiquitously available data, such as your voice or patterns of movement.
There’s also been a rise in health product innovation, and in the fast tracking of regulatory approval processes. Companies not in healthcare (distilleries, car companies, apparel brands, for instance) have been quickly retooling their manufacturing to supply masks, gowns, sanitizer, shields, ventilators. Regulators like the FDA have at the same time been fast-tracking regulations, so these products and new tools like vaccines, tests, or new ways to rapidly manufacture ventilators, masks, face shields and masks can get to health professionals and citizens faster.
We’ve also seen public health policy and economic policy innovations develop in matters of hours that pre-pandemic would have taken months or years — UBI-like funding or hazard pay for essential workers, for instance.
Other industries became health innovators, too
Traditionally, the health industry has scared off many other sectors because it’s so difficult to make change. However, the pandemic also smashed barriers to now enable other sectors to bring forward their assets, platforms and ingenuity to help society weather the health crisis. Here are a few of my favorite examples of other industries stepping up to help healthcare:
We’ve seen the repurposing assets (people, logistical systems) to deliver groceries, products, and medical supplies to elderly or other vulnerable people’s homes. Some examples include drones in Ireland, postal workers in India, dog-walkers in Scotland, a B2B car service in Spain, and a grocer in Germany.
We’ve seen non-healthcare organizations like banks or grocery stores implement preferred queuing and other benefits for essential workers and those most vulnerable to the virus. Many other major brands are providing free or heavily discounted food, car rides and services, and more.
Other organizations still are helping citizens access care virtually. Lack of access to digital infrastructure has widened inequities among our vulnerable and marginalized populations, including seniors, the poor, racialized, and people with disabilities. Telcos, hardware companies and digital entertainment companies have provided free tablets, phones, Wifi, home set up, and digital skills training to allow health workers and the elderly to seamlessly switch to digital healthcare.
Let’s not waste this devastating crisis
This accelerated progress in health innovation reveals that all along, barriers to progress may have actually been excuses to not create the future we want. They were perceived barriers.
Take regulatory policies, for example. When there’s a real burning platform to shed the legacy regulations that no longer serve, outdated regulations can change. Take technology —while most in healthcare have waited for tech innovations to be ‘perfect,’ we now see that the benefits of ‘good enough’ tech far outweigh the cost of not using it at all. Take mindsets, particularly the lack of will, courage, and hustle culture have been a major reason innovation has not flowed in healthcare. Peers around the world have now proven a massive propensity to think big, put the patients’ needs ahead of the organization’s needs, and get things done as a collective, without analysis paralysis, and unnecessary committees and meetings.
Innovation muscle memory
The ability of people and organizations to pivot their offerings, delivery channels, customers, and payment models in a matter of days brings many lessons and insights. I am most excited about how innovation muscles have been flexed and built — this will have memory, just like how our muscles get stronger after we shock them with a tough workout.
No business or organization goes backward to times that are “precedented” after major shocks like COVID-19 — such a dynamic has never existed. Society is now much more resilient, and prepared to pivot through the next “unprecedented” strains, twists, turns and shocks that are part of the natural lifecycle and evolution of business models.
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