The astonishing speed of pandemic healthcare innovation The healthcare industry has met the pandemic challenge and changed the face of healthcare for the future, says Alistair Grenfell, President, EMEA, IQVIA
T
he COVID-19 pandemic has been the most disruptive event in global affairs for half a century. A virus for which there is no known cure swept today’s globalised, hightech world and revealed vulnerabilities across health systems. As governments grappled with the spread of the virus, by closing down entire economic sectors and restricting social activity, health services were severely impacted. While across the world, in non-COVID cases, there have been significant reductions in screening, testing and diagnosis. The resultant delays in diagnosis are impacting treatments and patient outcomes. The effects of which are likely to continue for many years to come. For example, we know that approximately 1bn fewer diagnosis visits were made to HCPs in the US throughout the pandemic and across major world healthcare systems, oncologists report that caseload in 2021 is still below pre-pandemic levels by between 25 per cent and 50 per cent. Healthcare innovation, however, has come to the rescue. With astonishing speed, entirely new vaccines have been developed, the evolution and the transmission of the virus has been tracked and therapies have been repurposed. Just 11 months ago the first person to receive a non-trial COVID vaccine occurred, and this just 11 months after the first sequencing of the virus. The road to recovery In many areas, the healthcare industry rose to the challenge of tackling the pandemic through accelerating research to repurposing medicines and develop novel vaccines in the span of 12 months. Collaborative partnerships have allowed us to distribute vaccines to a third of humanity from across the globe and counting.
Reflecting on the part of the world where this conference is hosted, countries such as the United Arab Emirates and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia have been at the forefront of using latest technologies and data to manage the pandemic. These countries have been some of the earliest ones to introduce vaccine passport applications, and ahead against many others to manage their Covid-related fatalities. The United Arab Emirates has moved rapidly with more than 95 per cent of its population having received a first vaccination.
Alistair Grenfell President EMEA, IQVIA
“Public and private bodies will need to continue collaborating to safely connect healthcare and data, underpinned by technology” On a local level, everyone has had to adapt by using technology to continue their daily lives. Patients received remote consultations and diagnosis over videoconferencing tools, prescriptions have been sent to pharmacies electronically, and medicines delivered direct to the patient’s home. T hese multichannel healthcare tools introduced during the pandemic are changing operating models, as hospitals, companies, and governments continue to invest heavily in digital infrastructure. Italy, for example, will seek to invest approximately 1bn euro into telehealth
alone. And, in the U.S., telehealth now makes up 8 per cent of all claims. We are seeing clinical trial activity recover which suggests the engine of innovation is back up and running. Our data demonstrates that overall clinical trial activity rose by 20 per cent in 2020, driven by an acceleration of remote, virtual or decentralised clinical trials. This is only possible through continued and sustained investment from the private and public sectors. In the EU alone, tens of billions of dollars of public sector investment will be used to digitise healthcare. Future outlook We are still in a high-risk world and building the resilience of our health systems has never been so urgent. Advances in healthcare accelerate as our understanding of genetic
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