Spread of the virus makes solid case for innovation
My writing focuses on technological and institutional innovation in health care. The ominous spread of coronavirus bolsters the case for such advances: telemedicine; drones; artificial intelligence, machine learning, and Big Data; and more flexible regulation of health care personnel and institutions.
Telemedicine
Unofficial telemedicine likely saved my then92-year-old mother’s life. During a social conversation via FaceTime, her grandson, a physician, realized Mom was in the early stages of septic shock. A day’s delay in treatment might have proven fatal. Similar tales emerge from professional telemedicine doctors. I’ve suggested the advantages of telemedicine for, say, a migrant worker family on a remote ranch whose child becomes ill in the wee hours. The moral of these stories is that telemedicine offers patients speed, convenience and cost savings.
But coronavirus offers another advantage — more capacity to provide care while minimizing the opportunity for contagion. Patients with non-coronavirus complaints can receive care without mingling with other patients — perhaps coronavirus sufferers — in crowded waiting rooms. Potential coronavirus sufferers can use telemedicine to make preliminary contact with medical professionals to devise strategies for care that minimize risks to themselves and to others.
Telemedicine can smooth demand for medical services. Right now, Washington state physicians are likely overburdened with real and imagined coronavirus cases.
Drones and contagion
In 2016, Rwanda established the world’s first nationwide system of medical drones. In that country, two-thirds of blood deliveries outside the capital are now delivered by drone. Recently, several co-authors and I have written on reasons to use medical drones in America. We focused on speedier deliveries over vast rural areas, traffic-clogged urban areas, and transport-disrupted transport routes (e.g., icy roads, hurricane-ravaged areas).
Now, there’s an additional argument — movement of medical supplies and even patients without putting medical-industry personnel at risk.
Artificial intelligence
In 2015-16, Zika virus spread across Brazil. Simultaneously, there was an upswing in babies born with microcephaly (a smaller-than-normal head and an underdeveloped brain). WhatsApp, a peerto-peer messaging platform popular among Brazilians, played an outsized role in tracking the spread of Zika and in demonstrating the connection between the virus and the birth of microcephalic babies.
Epidemiologists and physicians were able to search for patterns in the queries, discussions, and comments across millions of Brazilians.
As with the Zika outbreak, decentralized Internet data are being aggregated to track the spread of coronavirus and to predict its onset in other locales. Using artificial intelligence and machine learning, algorithms ply vast quantities of Google searches, social media posts, and other internet data to identify patterns than no human being would ever see.
Medical regulation
Coronavirus should also raise questions about regulatory oversight over other areas of health care. Should it be easier for doctors licensed in one state to offer services in other states? Should non-physician providers (e.g., nurse practitioners, pharmacists) have greater latitude to offer unsupervised services — particularly where there are few if any doctors? Should public and private insurers reimburse physicians for phone calls, emails, video conferences, etc.? Should hospitals and clinics have greater leeway to expand services without going through expensive, cumbersome certificate-of-need processes?