How COVID-19 will shape innovation in the healthcare industry
The changes to Australian healthcare that will impact Australian jobs
The first step to exploring the ‘future of work’, which is the usual topic of our articles, is to understand the target future, and then consider how employees can support it. The future of healthcare is a hot topic right now, and the experience of COVID-19 is certain to leave lasting impacts on operations and priorities. So, as a preface to exploring the future of work in healthcare, this article will discuss the key innovations coming up in healthcare.
Despite the world-wide havoc wreaked by COVID-19, an extremely positive outcome of this pandemic is that it has fast-tracked innovations in the healthcare industry that were otherwise lying fairly stagnant. Eerily enough, Bill Gates actually predicted a pandemic in his 2015 Ted Talk, very well knowing we were not even close to being prepared. Today, investment in epidemic preparedness is a new worldwide focus; a virtual summit involving world leaders saw countries pledge 7.4 billion euros ($12.5 billion) towards coronavirus testing and treatment and the development of a vaccine.
So what innovations in health will help make our future more pandemic-proof? This article looks at two categories: strengthening the existing primary health care system, and sparking growth for peripheral capabilities.
Part 1 — Strengthening primary health care systems
In this section we’ll explore how current health operations may be strengthened, primarily through both data and resources.
Improved data quality and usability
As per this article by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (they are just so referenceable right now), our approach needs to both react to the short-term, AND improve preparedness for the long-term. Many of the systematic changes proposed involve how we manage data, such as enabling healthcare workers to better monitor disease patterns, investing in a case database for disease surveillance, and international data sharing. A basic data principle is that the more data we have to learn from, the more certainty of the results.
Many of the reported challenges around forecasting COVID-19 include the words ‘unprecedented’ and ‘unpredictable’ which is a data nightmare, so collaborative efforts would be particularly helpful. Pre-COVID-19 Australia already had a National Plan for Pandemics, which includes scenario modelling, but the challenge has been getting enough of the right data into the model. Some of the major challenges in data collection that we may be able to improve on include unagreed criteria for measuring the impact of COVID-19 and a lack of resources for mass testing, which brings us to our next point…
Investment in resources
According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the world’s 15 top military spenders allocate over US $1.9 billion to their defence budgets while the world’s nations spent a combined $1.9 trillion on their militaries in 2019, the largest expenditures since 2010. We prepare for shortages of oil and weapons in times of crisis, it is now exceedingly clear that medical supplies are just as critical. Health systems could have a centrally-managed inventory of healthcare supplies such as personal protective equipment (PPE), ventilators and other medical equipment in several locations to be stockpiled much like the military, and redirected in an emergency. In much the way as the U.S government supports U.S. manufacturers of weaponry, countries should also consider subsidising the manufacturing capacity needed to support reserves of critical medical supplies.
Of course, more budget also equals more people. We will discuss the ‘how’ in our next article, but similar to the way we have trained military (or fire fighting or lifeguard) professionals on-call, governments should also have access to trained personnel who are prepared to deal with an epidemic immediately.
While there are clearly a few ways to improve the health structure to be better prepared for future viral hazards, it is worth mentioning the agility and investment that’s been initiated in finding a COVID-19 vaccine. We can’t quite say ‘good job’ without knocking on wood because we don’t actually have a vaccine yet, but currently at least 90 vaccines are under development with some already in human trials. Traditional vaccine development is a highly complex and lengthy process, so when we do finally get a breakthrough vaccine it will be an exceptional feat of cross-border cooperation and scientific research. On average, the process takes 10.7 years and only about 6% of vaccine candidates are eventually approved for public use. Most experts think a vaccine is likely to become available by mid-2021, about 12–18 months after the virus first emerged. The speed at which scientists have been developing this vaccine is totally unprecedented and their tireless efforts should not be overlooked.
Part 2 — Peripheral Capabilities
In this section we’ll talk about career types that may be impacted by innovations in health, primarily in terms of technology and communications.
Technology
You’ve probably heard about telehealth, particularly during the week 29 March — 4 April, when Google searches for the word peaked in Australia:
Telehealth is a way of delivering health services remotely, either through telephone, video conferencing or other communication technologies. Harry Nespolon, president of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners says he wants to see the expanded telehealth services become a permanent part of the Medicare system, pending further development of the model. He elaborated that approximately 40% of consultations could be performed over telehealth, such as prescription renewals, which would mean drastic changes (and efficiencies) to scheduling healthcare workers.
Another use case for utilising technology to supplement healthcare operations would be data-based “forward-triage”, which is the sorting of patients before they arrive in the emergency department. Using telecommunications, databases, and apps like the COVIDSafe app to obtain the right information — such as travel and exposure history — would help to protect patients and clinicians. Think of this as a more sophisticated and comprehensive version of the printed paper signs we see on almost every business today that say some form of “do not enter if you have shown symptoms or have had contact with someone who tested positive”. Automated screening algorithms can be built into the intake process, and local epidemiological information can be used to standardise screening and practice across providers.
Communications
A bit of a theme you may have noticed in this article so far is that there’s been a lack of consistency related to many things COVID-19. We have not been testing consistently or measuring the outcome of tests consistently — many resources say that the death count is underestimated because it doesn’t capture those who weren’t tested, while other resources say that the count is overestimated because it includes deaths that would have happened whether COVID-19 existed or not. Inconsistencies also appear when we look at public health advice for individuals and businesses.
Imagine there was a single, reputable site that everyone knew to go to for advice on reacting to COVID-19, even if it simply categorised ideas from ‘well-researched’ to ‘hypothesis’ to ‘definitely not true’. The pandemic has been a major event for highlighting the importance of broadcasting expert advice instead of sensationalism and offhand ideas (yes, I’m referencing the ‘ingesting disinfectant’ incident).
Conclusion
Changes to the primary health system and growth in peripheral capabilities will mean that the job descriptions (and opportunities) will look different for health professionals in the future. As a teaser for our next article on the future of work in healthcare, we expect that consistent data collection will be a group effort across the board, and the increased focus on health can open up new training and on-call work opportunities for some of the low-skill, critical tasks that need to be carried out. As we increase our safety stock of medical PPE, we may also increase our ‘stock’ of workers that can triage, administer screening and support other high volume work.
While healthcare is already a major contributor to employment with over 13% of Australia’s jobs in the health industry, it’s likely that we will see more health-driven work in other areas, such as technology and communications. There will still need to be subject matter experts with medical training contributing to projects, but the infrastructure and channels for telehealth, databases, and more will be led by other professions. While many of the ‘future of health’ ideas sound like a large jump or like idealistic utopia, we have Scott Morrison’s goal of 1,000,000 Australians back to work, and we may be able to use a few of those jobs to accelerate innovation in healthcare.
