How COVID-19 is driving AI adoption across the healthcare industry.

As the coronavirus pandemic spread globally, medical professionals became inundated with people contacting their GPs. As the coronavirus pandemic spread globally, medical professionals became inundated with people contacting their GPs or worse, those coming into Emergency Rooms (ERs) with minor symptoms. The onslaught of panicked people quickly overwhelmed ERs and medical call centres worldwide and forced healthcare organisations to review how their workforce continued delivering care under such difficult circumstances, including finding ways to engage with patients under social distancing guidelines.

The flood of calls and enquiries of concerned people meant that many healthcare professionals had to divert time away from seriously ill patients in order to make (what was largely negative) COVID-19 assessments. As a direct response in dealing with this, medical professionals and administrative hospital staff put many non-urgent consultations on hold and designed systems to triage patients, whilst also creating COVID and COVID-free areas of hospitals to prevent uninfected patients and other hospital workers becoming exposed to the disease. More so than ever before, health systems started rapidly adopting digital and automated solutions to support them in the assessment process, catalysing a monumental shift in the healthcare industry.