Unintended Effects of Coronavirus Disease-2019.
Telemedicine became necessary when doctors shut their outpatient office doors, leaving anything but acute cases of (mostly COVID-19) illness out in the cold. This led to cries for reimbursement, further accelerating the evolution of healthcare outside the exam room. This in turn has really excited investment markets for accelerating new ways of delivering previously underestimated
mental and medical healthcare service demands. The internet-of things in the healthcare world now is receiving much attention for its ability to keep well-understood and manageable chronic illnesses out of needed physician office appointment slots and now provides a longitudinal structure for patient outcomes documentation and pattern tracking over time.
With a turn to the positive and potentially permanently beneficial changes brought by COVID-19 are innovations in so many areas of life: occupational, social, economic, etc. The innovations since January 2020 in business, the sciences, and healthcare access and delivery are the most intriguing and promising unintended consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Would any among us have thought something as simple as a pandemic would have so many domino effects? Hopefully, some will cease by this publication, but others…may they teach us
things that may seem unrelated or independent are far from that and that perhaps, the health of the planet plays a far larger role in our vitality and progress than on most days we will admit and that
they deserve great care, planning, cooperation, and going forward together, not as isolated groups or institutions or economies or geographies.
Epidemiol Open J. 2022; 7(1): e1-e2. doi: 10.17140/EPOJ-7-e003
