Maintaining Health Care Innovations After the Pandemic

This Viewpoint discusses evaluating and perhaps extending the record of successful innovation arising from the COVID-19 pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the worst failings of the health care system, but it also stimulated a flurry of innovations that could lead to a much-improved delivery system. These were innovations that were born out of necessity: telemedicine access and use skyrocketed, new hospital-at-home services emerged, ambulatory surgical centers expanded their menu of procedures, and a variety of novel therapeutics such as widespread vaccine distribution, new medical diagnostics, and innovative monoclonal antibodies were introduced. The collection of new services with flexible delivery mechanisms suggested a future that reduces the scope of the legacy and costly brick-and-mortar delivery system and instead forges ahead toward a new era of digital medicine. With the crisis now behind us, we are witnessing an attempted retrenchment from this spate of innovation.