Allianz Partners’ Paula Covey discusses new report exploring the unprecedented acceleration of healthcare trends beyond the timelines predicted in ‘The World in 2040’ series just three years ago

The Covid-19 pandemic stopped the world in its tracks and turned life on its head overnight for billions of people across the world. The impact of this pandemic was unprecedented in modern times and sparked a mammoth collective effort from the global health and science community to develop a vaccine as quickly as possible. A collective effort which was enormously successful and has resulted in the delivery of new treatments and medicines years earlier than previously predicted.

In 2019, Allianz Partners commissioned futurist Ray Hammond to develop The World in 2040, a series of reports which explored the trends and developments likely to impact health, travel, mobility and home life over the next 20 years. When it comes to many of the developments expected in healthcare and medical science, the Covid-19 pandemic has dramatically accelerated the projected timelines outlined just three years ago. 

With that in mind, although Covid hasn’t gone away, it felt timely to revisit the initiative this summer as the world adjusts to the ‘new normal’ way of life. The new report from Ray Hammond, COVID-19: How it accelerated the Future of Healthcare, examines what the impact of the pandemic means for the future of healthcare, science and technology.

The report highlights the acceleration of many innovations in healthcare, science and technology, perhaps most notably the unlocking of the vast potential of mRNA technologies, which can be applied to multiple other conditions and illnesses. 

The world now sits on the verge of several potentially significant breakthroughs, mostly thanks to the ongoing research into high-tech, gene-based vaccines, which could now benefit patients with cancer, heart disease and infectious diseases. 

By December 2021 more than eight billion vaccine doses had been administered around the world and more than 4.4 billion people had received one or more doses of a vaccine, which equates to about 56% of the world’s population. 

The technologies developed to produce the Covid-19 mRNA vaccines are now being used to develop a number of further treatments. Researchers at the Yale School of Medicine are currently tackling a vaccine for malaria, while heart tissue damaged during heart attacks is now being successfully regenerated in animal trials by researchers at King’s College London. Moderna has begun a trial for a HIV vaccine. Clinical trials of new drugs and treatments have also been re-designed and speeded up without incurring additional health risks for test participants. 

The original ‘Future Health, Care and Wellbeing’ report also predicted that soon, informed patients would be monitoring their blood pressure, blood glucose levels, potassium levels and other key health indicators with fashionable wearable devices, without the need for cumbersome equipment or invasive blood testing. Covid-19 has accelerated this practice considerably, and now technological capabilities in healthcare are extensive. 

Today, health tech goes well beyond the traditional smart watch, with devices offering consumers and medics virtual snapshots of a patient’s vital signs. As the virtual ward develops and more patients are treated at home, other sensors and monitors are now providing additional information about the health and wellbeing of the patients to medics. These wireless sensors include mats which can detect changes in a patient’s gait, cameras for patient observation, motion sensors, electric plug and switch sensors, door sensors, humidity sensors and ambient temperature sensors.

In the near future, monitoring patients in the virtual wards introduced over the past two years will become less time-consuming as artificial intelligence systems (AI) assume the role of monitoring the patients 24 hours a day. 

Covid-19 has had a terrible cost to human lives across the globe. However, the medical innovations resulting from the pandemic may save the lives of many in the years to come. This is a very welcome silver lining following a hugely challenging few years for people around the world.