My World: June 2021…

This is part of a series of articles where our contributors describe how they think things will look a year from now.

Our health system is already becoming more digital, and some aspects will be increasingly devolved

The impact of covid-19 has been to transform our working lives and will enable many organisations to rethink the way they go about things. My own company’s disaster recovery and remote working plan moved seamlessly into place a week before the official lockdown. We have all become reasonably proficient at FaceTime, Zoom, Slack and remote communication in general. This has led us to question the old ways of working, with so many face-to-face meetings, lengthy travel and the routine of office life. 

However, over time people will increasingly miss the social contact that our old ways involved, especially once fear 

of the disease lessens – as testing, new social distancing techniques and treatments or a vaccine are put in place. 

In the healthcare sector we have seen a revolutionary uptake of telephone and internet triage, and this has accelerated the pace of digital change enormously. The health system is going to get more investment to make it more resilient, and even more non-urgent, non-acute care will come out into the primary care arena. Of that much I am sure.