Cases: 187 Million
Deaths: 4.03 Million
Hospitals: 164,500+

We can’t forget. We cannot forget what they have done and what they are doing to this day. who knew the year that was to await them. Who knew what they would be confronted with. The world has changed for everyone, forevermore. Yet, in the eyes of our first responders, and front line medical community, it is altogether different.

If there was ever a time that we builders of technology were given a reason to design. If ever there was a time that we makers of things were ever given a reason to craft. Now is that time. Every major and minor hospital in the world, every medical practice facility and clinic has been tested to their core in dramatic fashion. The pandemic has become one of the greatest disruptors of our time.

Now, when we talk about disruption we are typically speaking in the sense of technology. We’ve come to know disruption as an emerging technology that supersedes itself. But Never have we seen a pandemic disrupt technology. Never have we seen something more devastating to our economies into business. This has forced us to think differently and has changed and updated our approach to mass communication in ways we never have before.

So the pandemic has become a great disrupter.

In hospitals around the world, there are hundreds if not thousands of decisions that are made every day. Some decisions save lives while others cost lives. It’s not easy. It takes the highest level of professionalism. The performance of frontline hospital workers also depend heavily on the proper training, tools and current scientific data. Our current global pandemic has stretched the capacity of healthcare systems around the world. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General reports in a National Pulse Survey, “Hospital clinicians have had to keep up with emerging treatment protocols, often without sufficient specialty staff, such as infectious disease specialists, pulmonologists, respiratory therapists, and clinical nurses trained in treating COVID-19.” Compounded with high turnover and shorthanded staff, quality of care is weighing in the balance of physical burnout and moral injury.

Decision making has never been so critical. On the other hand, decision making has never been so enhanced, accelerated and augmented by the technologies that are at our fingertips. In the world of medicine. We’ve seen great acceleration, not only with the development of the vaccines that now yet abide in many of us, but also with the process in which it’s carried out; assimilated, delivered and distributed.

But there’s more to this. There’s more to all of this. Let’s take a brief step back and take a look at what we’ve seen in the very early days of the pandemic.

2020: Winter, Into Spring

Grocery outlets and markets that were once filled were left empty in many destinations around the world. Global quarantine had begun. Families together in shared spaces. Individuals keeping community through digital screens and windows. Millions of workers with no offices and buildings to enter in. Emergency Rooms increasingly became packed and filled to capacity limits. Lines of Covid infected and other emergency diseases were wrapped around corners of neighborhoods. A scene that is very reminiscent of voting lines, trips to the ballgame or a favorite concert we want to attend. We’ve never seen lines like that before leading into medical facilities. Where people were seeking care and remedy for survivability.

Hardware availability was limited and demand had reached beyond its capacity for fulfillment. There were millions outside of the Covid vertical that were left untreated for a number of diseases as common treatment stopped.
Surgical theaters were shuttered for most outpatient operations.

Yet, as the pandemic progressed, we progressed. In areas where lights went off, new lights were turned on, virtually.

A trip to the hospital was usually met with transportation, parking, walking and registering to meet with a practitioner. However, during quarantine many simply changed to walking into their living rooms, turned on devices, cameras, microphones and had a meeting. Most of us, or perhaps rather, many of us can attest to these experiences of both occasions.

Now, in this pandemic era that we find ourselves in during this great progression of technical change, we have adapted towards this change and in many instances are not reverting back.

Also during this time, we’ve begun to take advantage of technologies that weren’t just created during the pandemic but had been on the scene for many years. The world began to virtually interact across all industries with proper tools and utilities adopted, giving capability to many industries that were able to continue soldiering on during the height and peak of the pandemic. Virtually the remote world within hospitals began to increase their usage of what we know as Telemedicine, in capacities they had never even been imagined at this early stage. Old dusty blueprints for reopened routes and pathways to communication were rediscovered. Technology that was waiting to be used and driven was fueled to capacity.

The need that still remains, and that remains yet, is the need for better tools for our medical communities. The increasing need to extend reality for deeper communication. The need for medical training, biomedical acceleration and laboratory development tools and hyper mapping preparedness charts that will help hospitals to refine emergency ingress and egress paths. Tools that bring us even closer to our medical visits that are developed to detect early, mid and late stage symptoms by way of teleportation visits and wearables.
That actually brings our doctors to us in our homes by way of holography that integrates roboticism as intermediaries between patient and practitioner. Software that meets the challenge of the continual threat of today’s pandemic.

With all that we’ve built thus far in XR technology, we’ve only scratched the surface on more of what we must continue to build.

Industry startups and corporations are building some of the greatest tools that humankind has ever known. It is imperative for our essential frontline medical community to be stocked and equipped with the tech that can properly assist them in delivering the highest quality of care possible.

For what they have and don’t have impacts us all.

At Holopratice, we’re ideating and constructing tools that directly respond to these needs.