The catastrophic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic – from both a public health and an economic perspective – will stay with us for a long, long time to come. We will likely refer to the “pre-pandemic era” and “the post-pandemic era” as permanent markers in our lives.

One of the most significant impacts of the pandemic has been unprecedented physician burnout and an acute shortage of caregivers and in-home caregiving aides. According to results published in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings, 63% of physicians reported at least one symptom of burnout at the end of 2021 and the beginning of 2022.

This trend has been further exacerbated by the fact that nearly one in five healthcare workers have quit their jobs during the pandemic due to the stress imposed by associated factors like poor pay, and burnout.   This impact is being perhaps most acutely felt by seniors 65 years and older with chronic conditions who are unable to care for themselves in their homes and need help from caregiving aides who are MIA.

Can Technological Innovation help address this caregiver shortage and physician burnout?

While it is virtually impossible to replace physicians, clinicians, nurses, and front-line workers with technology – and nor would we want to -, it is imperative to address significant inefficiencies in healthcare through innovations like digital patient engagement (DPE) and virtual healthcare delivery (VHD) comprising telehealth, remote patient monitoring, analytics, artificial intelligence and medical robotics.

So how can we get the revolution started?

Let’s look at three key drivers that will drive investment, innovation and adoption:

1. The need to deliver high quality healthcare to far larger numbers of patients afflicted with a contagious disease and co-morbidities at a scale never seen before.
2. Protecting the health, safety and lives of first responders and caregivers.  The need to treat patients infected with a contagious disease in large numbers while protecting caregivers by minimizing direct contact through greater use of technology

The convergence of analytics and artificial intelligence is being embraced by visionary leaders in healthcare to achieve incredible things:

• • Initial patient screening and scheduling and physician consults using telehealth and telemedicine
  • Patient data capture through AI powered cloud- based apps, chatbots and devices for proactive patient screening, testing, analysis, monitoring, capture and recording of vital signs integrated with patient portals.
  • Prescription filling and fulfillment to get your drugs and prescriptions delivered at your doorstep through platforms like Amazon Pharmacy and Pillpack by Amazon, which alleviate the hassles associated with prescription refills for seniors and the chronically ill
  • Post-discharge care-coordination across the continuum of care especially for high-risk patients thru remote patient monitoring with sophisticated predictive analytics to ensure medication compliance and proactively detect life impacting events before they happen

3.  A particularly promising area that has seen significant traction in Asia is the deployment of Medical Robotics. Just imagine what this capability can achieve:

• • Improve manual and repetitive process efficiency through robots or autonomous guided vehicles (AGVs) to sanitize medical instruments or deliver meals, drugs, supplies and blood samples between wards, pharmacies and laboratories
  • Protect care teams by reducing direct contact with patients with “pick-and-place” robots with machine vision to capture vital signs (temperature, pressure, sugar levels, etc.) and disinfect operating and patient examination rooms, as well as more sophisticated applications like minimally invasive surgery through the DaVinci Robots and similar surgical robots.
  • Enabling post-discharge patient care and recovery in countries like Japan through companion robots that help with rehabilitation and recuperation. These robots equipped with machine vision can also serve food and medicine, apply bandages and are being used for remote patient monitoring. These robots also support patients, especially seniors, with their daily activities in long term care settings.

Disrupting healthcare

Covid-19 has emerged as the most significant “disruptor” in healthcare, resulting in unprecedented physician fatigue and caregiver shortages that is triggering a crisis for senior and chronically ill patients across the nation.

The good news is that emerging technologies hold the potential to protect doctors, nurses, caregivers, and first responders while driving up efficiencies for manual tasks and processes and enhancing productivity. One of the unexpected long-term effects of the pandemic may well be accelerated innovation, with the urgency of the pandemic driving needed transformation on a much faster timeline than we ever anticipated.