By Hemanta Panda
COVID-19 will precisely compel every business to innovate and find newer ways to operate in the future. There will be a series of innovations in medicine and healthcare, food and nutrition management, and a host of areas affecting consumer’s lifestyle management.
During 1918-1920, Influenza took the lives of around 50-100 million people. Often termed as Spanish Flu – it did not originate from Spain. As Spain did not go into World War I – the Spanish press was free to report the epidemic which resulted in the deadly event known as Spanish Flu.
During that time epidemiologists had concluded that people working in pig farms were immune to one strand of the Spanish flu virus. Every person’s body exercises an element of defense mechanism to overcome the virus. That process is nothing but an act of building immunity. If the inherent immunity reacts to curbing the virus successfully, the defense mechanism within the person becomes stronger in handling the virus. The science of immunity testing and vaccine creation was a significant outcome of the Spanish flu epidemic.
Life’s challenges are unique, unpredictable, and uncertain. Some call this an opportunity. An opportunity to innovate and invent. In the USA, the initial testing during March 2020 to detect COVID-19 consisted of collecting nasal swab samples from patients. That test took longer and was inconvenient to the patients. That opportunity resulted in a joint venture between Rutgers University and biological labs who invented a novel testing methodology taking patient’s spit samples in April 2020 and arriving at the outcome in two days.
In 6 weeks from mid-March 2020 to the end of April 2020, the USA’s workforce had shrunk by 30 million people who had filed for unemployment benefits. These numbers are staggering. In days to come there will be a significant emphasis on scaling up testing with minimal turnaround. With the asymptomatic nature of this virus infection, it is critical that everyone gets tested. Vaccine identification is key to curbing the onset of COVID-19 cases in the future. There will be several innovations around crowd-testing, self-testing, and vaccine trials in the near future. We could be seeing a new normal in our lifestyles and behaviors.
Coronavirus infected patients are showing different kinds of symptoms. Surprisingly some have serious skin ailments whereas others are coping fairly well. As it is becoming increasingly clear that this novel virus has come from animals, it will take time to understand this microorganism. Till then superfoods or dietary supplements aiding lung health – such as Matcha tea, Berries, Protein-rich diet (for example) can help build one’s immunity. Innovation from companies doing research in identifying immunity building supplements and nutrition will thrive. These supplements can affect an individual favorably or unfavorably based on their conditions.
Lifestyle has changed drastically due to the lockdown directives. The onset of this virus or another virus causing havoc can occur again in the future. The corporates will make a serious attempt to achieve productivity through their employees by remote interaction. There will be significant innovation around secure, scalable visual collaboration tools powered thru the internet. The grocery stores will innovate around migrating to a pick-up, delivery model over on-line channels – websites, messaging etc. The increase in door to door shipping from business to consumer will trigger businesses to innovate.
The scale of telemedicine will be tested in the near future. The doctors will diagnose the patients via a smartphone and provide a prescription to the pharmacy near the patients home to trigger a delivery of medicine to the patient’s home. This end to end process of diagnosis, prescription, and shipping the medicine to the doorstep will be fine-tuned gradually through innovation. The cost to serve in travel, restaurants, entertainment will increase leading to a rise in commodity prices. The Internet will be the catalyst for these innovative consumer-driven changes.
In essence – there will be a series of innovations in medicine and healthcare, food and nutrition management, and a host of areas affecting consumer’s lifestyle management.
(Hemanta Panda is a technologist who lives in New Jersey, USA)