Anita D'Amico

Advancement in Health

The Gl obal Pandemic

Technology and Innovators Rise to a Challenge

The ramifications of COVID-19 have been many, but in the words of Albert Einstein, “in the midst of every crisis lies great opportunity.” In this case, a chance to adapt and change for the better, specifically with the rapid adoption of cutting-edge technology. Responding deftly to the pandemic, leaders in most all verticals have leaned on technology and the Internet of Things (IoT), in particular.

Connected Health Takes a Significant Step Forward

Healthcare is an incredibly innovative industry, and the pandemic proved no exception to the industry’s adaptation. Healthcare providers, technology developers, patients, and clinical trial participants have been not just heroes but also champions in adopting technology in response to the pandemic.

The industry overcame challenges in continuing to provide safe care for non-COVID patients by swiftly adopting telemedicine. One company, Dexcom, leveraged IoT to uphold steady monitoring of hospitalized diabetes patients while minimizing the use of critically in-demand PPE. Nurses did not need to get close to aging diabetes patients just to monitor glucose levels, which would have endangered everyone, and the solution was designed and installed in a matter of days. The pharmaceutical sector raced with phenomenal speed towards vaccine development, utilizing the IoT ecosystem to perform a hybridization of virtual and onsite clinical trials.

Adoption of Connected Health technology has been slow and steady until now, but since the pandemic has started, each month has led to a year’s worth of adoption and innovation – and more! The future for Connected Health is bright and the key trends include: (i) caring for patients remotely, (ii) bringing better efficiency and efficacy to clinical trials, even while bringing the related treatments and drugs to market faster, and (iii) fine-tuning medical wearables to deliver biomedical data to providers or indeed more analysis at the edge to empower self-administration in chronic disease patients.

Assets and Logistics See Technology Overhaul

Another industry the pandemic took a significant swing at is assets and logistics. The supply chain was shaken as global manufacturing was disrupted while, simultaneously, e-commerce sharply peaked. Already a complex industry, assets and logistics needed to shift even further towards a technology-driven approach into visibility and analytics to make highly informed, real-time decisions.

A spotlight was also trained on cold chain monitoring as vaccine development forged ahead. With vaccines nearing approval, the need arose for global, multimodal transport of vaccines that were required to be kept cold or extremely cold and shipped in not just one, but two doses. This resulted in the need for even more granular visibility and the ability to monitor viabilitycritical temperature and condition, as well as uphold regulatory compliance. Deploying condition monitoring sensors, GPS, and analytics platforms has aided greatly in the ability to move life-saving assets efficiently.

Enabling Remote Education and a Remote Workforce Through Today’s Technology

Romil Bahl,

President & CEO at KORE

The high bandwidth of cellular and Wi-Fi/local networks and Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) enabled the workforce to rapidly shift to remote locations in response to the pandemic. In the not-too-distant past, the economy could have shuddered to a more dramatic halt without these critical components. Similarly, children were able to maintain a mostly normal schedule in many school systems with the rapid provisioning of virtual classes.

Once more, a technology trend that was essentially thrust upon organizations of all kinds is likely to continue in the future, though perhaps with less density. Technology enhancements will aid in the permanence of remote work. The rollout of 5G will lend the speed and reduced latency required for edge computing and faster endpoint analysis. Artificial intelligence will give rise to augmented reality of offices, offering a more immersive teleconferencing experience.

Forward Thinking and Leadership

These technology-driven solutions did not appear overnight to aid in pandemic response. Remote patient monitoring, decentralized clinical trials, analytics and condition monitoring in logistics, cloud computing and VPNs – they all had a place in the market from forwardthinking innovators. It then took leadership and inspiration to adopt these technologies swiftly and leverage them for the crisis at hand.

And now a world of possibility will ride on the coattails of this widespread IoT adoption. As artificial intelligence, machine learning, and the power of 5G become more pervasive in the market, the same futurefocused innovators will undoubtedly continue to leverage technology for good. The decade of IoT ahead promises to be hugely exciting, as we move towards a more intelligent and connected planet.

Eron Heard

CRO

Cyber Forza