Covid-pandemic has an unprecedented impact on global, regional, and national health systems across countries. Both public and private healthcare sectors had struggled and are still struggling to respond to the impact of the pandemic. The struggle is not only about adopting diverse healthcare responses in terms of cutting-edge technological tools and innovations in the areas of public health, medicine and wellness to take prompt decisions to address the pandemic by flattening the disease curve but also to revisit and reopen the realm of “digital health” in the policy and public discourse.

While keeping in view, the short, medium and long term response strategies, it is an appropriate time to take a tangible shift toward holistic technology and data-driven digital tools. This will help to engage both public and private healthcare systems across the country in facilitating policy dialogue, technical assistance and training on specialized policy and response interventions at the regional and national level. It is also a fact that the well-tested hardware are already in place and quite a few experiments have been conducted but has not been in good use, particularly in developing nations, for lack of national will, want of resources, and strategic planning to reach those who really need it most.

An alignment of expertise, leadership, and practices are required to synthesize knowledge and experience to assess capacities and avenues of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, Blockchain, health wearables, remote patient monitoring trackers, sensor-enabled hospital beds, medication-tracking systems and medical supplies and equipment inventory tracking systems. This will provide policy dialogue and responses to make the healthcare systems inclusive and accessible in terms of better patient experience and cost (1).

With the advent of newer technology, it will percolate down. The real concern is its application up to the last point. The first telemedicine experiments in developing nations were conducted way back in 1970s and 80s and a couple of more “resourceful” healthcare operators use it off and on since the early 1990s. The problem with the developing countries is to integrate the emerging healthcare technologies into the operational situation, that too for all. We should remember that any technology has the inherent characteristics of being used by those who can afford it. So, either it is a tool in the hand of private players (many of them have state of art technology) or the cost is subsumed by the State, which failed in the last so many decades to take to the last point. Educating and communicating people about the benefits of healthcare technology would come later when it is made available to them.

The potential of telemedicine is well observed during the pandemic time as several consultations with doctors/health experts happened without going to the clinic or hospital. This was a positive sign and urges to look into new business models to help further telemedicine across the world. On this front, it is a time to encourage companies to come to the forefront with a wide range of tech-driven digital healthcare tools and products. It was predicted by the health industry experts that tele-health market across the world is likely to witness a massive spike both from the demand and supply sides. The service providers are assessing capacities and avenues, pursuing evidence-based innovations and technologies across the board, including diagnostic and telemedicine tools, cellphone apps for fitness, well-being, medical and healthcare, and data-driven software. But the argument is that maybe it is the pandemic which compelled to explore and extend these technologies to deal with the spatial and temporal gaps to access healthcare. The concern shall be to look into how these technologies and innovations will be used in a post-covid world to deal with public health issues (2). How in coming days, technologies and innovations will be integrated with public health response system for greater accessibility and affordability to health care services should be a priority area of research in public health studies. The pandemic has unraveled the myriad avenues and opportunities in boosting healthcare and life sciences in the world, it would be interesting to look into how health shall be observed as wealth in the post Covid world with technology and innovations as its greatest investment.

 

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