Digital Health
The much-touted future of healthcare has finally arrived , thanks to the pandemic
Covid-care has necessitated more reliance on telemedicine , which has been taking its time to enter the mainstream
“ The pandemic for us has been really useful . We ’ ve really translated these kinds of ideas into action much faster than we ’ ve ever done before .”
Despite the manifold difficulties caused by the pandemic over the last year , an optimistic Dr Shafi Ahmed , the much-lauded �ritish colorectal surgeon , futurist , entrepreneur , and holder of multiple professorships , sees a positive side to the crisis .
�It was Abraham Lincoln who said that the best way to predict the future is to create it . What the global healthcare system had been seeing over the last year of the pandemic is an acceleration in the development and implementation of clinical technologies ,” he told Medical Festival Asia , an online event coconceptualised by Global Health Asia-Pacific and Messe Düsseldorf Asia that took place last December .
“ One needs to remember that we ’ ve been really fortunate to live in 2020 because we have the availability of many technologies that have come together , which we would never have had at any time previously ,” he said .
Dr Ahmed ’ s job is to gaze into the future , not dwell on the past . His preoccupation is with how technology has been developing and then to paint a picture of how it can be applied better across each future iteration .
It ’ s this fascination with what lies ahead that earned him the Future NHS Award given by members of the British parliament in 2018 and had him shortlisted for a British Academy of Film and Television Arts ( BAFTA ) award the following year for a series of live-streamed operations using Google Glass , virtual reality , and social media on national television . This also gave him the world record for being the world ’ s most viewed surgeon on the internet .
His mantra is quite simple : it is to translate technology into clinical practice and make it accessible and affordable .
He argues that the pandemic has succeeded in bringing a new level of tolerance of innovation to hospitals and other healthcare providers , which are traditionally allergic to leaving things to chance .
“ Hospitals work in an industry that is risk-averse and not prone to change . But this has all changed ; there ’ s been a mind shift there with people who are coming to understand the need to use new technologies ,” he said .
Faced with widespread panic and fear that infections could spread from COVID-19 patients to other parts of their hospitals , surgeons have been forced to cancel operations , sick people have been told to stay away , and many doctors have endured long months with just a trickle of patients .
Since the sick still need attention , the situation has prompted traditionally risk-averse institutions to look at new ways to treat them , such as telemedicine and remote-healthcare that have for many years been talked about as the future of healthcare but rarely progressed beyond TED talks and talking heads .
“ The pandemic for us has been really useful . We ’ ve really translated these kinds of ideas into action much faster than we ’ ve ever done before ,” Dr Ahmed said . ��egulations have quickly changed to make it easier to implement these technologies , and we ’ ve been seeing more collaborations between healthcare institutions and digital service providers — all due to the pandemic .”
It ’ s not only health providers , but patients themselves , who have changed their mindset . For example , it ’ s now commonplace for many patients to book a virtual appointment with their doctor and take advantage of digital devices to diagnose illness , rather than seeing their doctor in person .
Diabetics , for example , can now call on remote sensors to monitor their condition . Though such technology is not new or groundbreaking , it has now
Google Glass
60 AUGUST 2021 GlobalHealthAsiaPacific . com