Introduction
The COVID-19 crisis is spurring a very particular type of change across healthcare. It’s immediate change, it’s urgent change, but most of all it’s change we already knew we needed to make. It’s change that once felt like it would be an eventual, down-the-road move but is suddenly essential business.
For years, healthcare has been playing catch-up to retail and other industries, digitizing slowly but surely. But healthcare professionals are now virtualizing many of their engagements because they have no other choice. Perhaps it’s another way in which the pandemic is a great equalizer, but that doesn’t mean that everyone’s reacting on equal footing. With limited experience and on short timelines, brands are moving their field teams home, radically retooling while everything is on the line.
Patients are adjusting, too, as they stay home, away from the experiences and tools designed for conventional visits to the doctor’s office. And physicians are treating patients differently— with 59% of them, according to a recent Syneos Health study, implementing a telehealth program in direct response to COVID-19. And, with travel to conferences off the table, they’re also learning differently, connecting with peers and educational resources through telling new avenues.
These unprecedented circumstances have led 75% of physicians to see a decrease in patient volume. So, doctors are available, and they’re looking for COVID-specific assurance, supply chain continuity, and all the support they can get. To that end, Syneos Health has designed four pivotal solutions. They’re not novel concepts or pilots. They’re proven solutions that we can pull forward at scale, as our industry experience more change in the next six months than was predicted for the next six years. Each of these pivots helps a brand keep up momentum during this crisis and thrive in the new future it’s already shaping.
