How coronavirus is helping drive the digitalization of healthcare

Digital medicine is increasingly attracting the attention of investors who see the pandemic triggering a sea change in the way we understand and manage our health.

We’re talking about mainly about three different areas: telemedicine, out-patient care and continuous monitoring. Between them, they bring us closer to a scenario of genuinely preventive medicine, where many diseases can be treated before they take hold, thus reducing suffering and, in many cases, the costs associated with their treatment.

Chinese investors are pouring money into companies working on remote monitoring of various health parameters, as well as telemedicine, at a time when many people were avoiding hospitals. China, which has already declared victory over the pandemic, is experiencing a change in habits among the population, and this pattern is also appearing in other countries that now show a growing preference for remote consultations, increasingly available through a wide range of offers.

There is also growing interest in providing hospital care in the patient’s home, an approach that in the United States alone could save hundreds of millions of dollars that is spent on maintaining hospital buildings: a huge number of conditions that usually require hospitalization can be treated at home with relatively…