Life feels a lot blurrier today than it did pre-pandemic. Gone are the black-and-white boundaries dictating that we work, live, play, and seek care in certain settings and within certain times. Now we can shut our laptops to pivot from “work mode” to “personal mode”—even attend a doctor’s appointment over Zoom—all within minutes.
As the global president of Inflammation & Immunology (I&I) at Pfizer, I’ve been considering what these global tectonic shifts mean for millions of people living with chronic I&I diseases. In the US alone, about 3 million people suffer with inflammatory bowel disease, 1.5 million with rheumatoid arthritis, and 32 million with atopic dermatitis.
As we consider a return to normality at home, school, and work, the health-care industry has the opportunity to use lessons from pandemic-triggered shifts to improve care for people with chronic I&I conditions.
We’ve gone too far past the tipping point to go back to the ‘old ways’ for how we work, live, play, and manage our health.
Lesson 1: Telehealth Should Be a Long-Term Resource, Not Just a Stopgap.
In the earliest stages of the pandemic, many people put medical care on hold, both to fend off infection and to preserve medical capacity for people in urgent need. By the end of June 2020, 41 percent of US adults had delayed or avoided medical care, including urgent or emergency care and routine care, because of pandemic-related concerns, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. For people with I&I conditions, these were difficult choices; regular care can be essential to keeping such conditions under control. The stress of managing care in new ways—under threat from an unknown infectious disease—exacerbated symptoms just when care was harder to access. In response, providers embraced telehealth, increasing use by up to 4,000 percent in the US during the pandemic. Possibly a source of confusion and anxiety at first, new technologies grew familiar over time to health-care providers and patients alike. Now that we are ready to view telehealth as a long-term resource, we must advocate for policies including equal support for virtual and in-person care options.
Lesson 2: Incorporating Different Technologies into the Care Continuum Needs to Be the Norm, Not the Backup Plan.
Just as businesses incorporated Zoom, Teams, and other technologies into everyday operations, the health-care industry adopted additional technologies to support people with chronic conditions in accessing care. This integration of technologies (like those supporting virtual clinical trials and wearables enabling remote monitoring) must remain in the care continuum. Virtual clinical trials allow patient observation without barriers such as geography, mobility concerns, or schedules. Remote monitoring enables broader health evaluation in the context of patients’ lives, providing a more realistic picture of the daily burden of disease. Integration of these technologies into the care continuum should be the norm.
Lesson 3: We Need to Give People the Flexibility to Navigate Ambiguity in Ways that Work Best for Them and Their Unique Needs.
Over the past 16 months, millions of people did their jobs effectively from their homes. Employees in nearly every industry found resourceful solutions to remain productive without going to the workplace. Now that the barriers have come down, some workers may not be eager to put them back up. For people experiencing daily pain and discomfort, like many patients we work to support, having the option to work remotely can allow flexibility to adapt schedules to symptoms and manage flare-ups, without added worry about how coworkers might perceive their symptoms or absences. We should recognize and account for patients with “invisible” diseases in return-to-work plans by allowing people to choose how they want their new reality to appear—in the context of their work roles, where possible. This should involve individualized discussion about what each person needs to succeed. The unique concerns of people with chronic I&I diseases deserve this attention as we establish new routines.
COVID-Driven Change Is Here to Stay. Let’s Make It Work for Everyone.
We’ve gone too far past the tipping point to go back to the “old ways” for how we work, live, play, and manage our health. Instead of stressing about what’s past, we should embrace new beginnings and the opportunity to define new ways of working and living.
Increase your time with family and friends, instead of traveling to frequent medical appointments. Take the time you need to maintain your health while doing your best work. If possible, use wearables and apps to provide your doctors with more—and better—data to guide treatment decisions. Although lifelines may be blurrier than before, pandemic lessons have pushed the health-care industry to engage with and support patients in more personalized and convenient ways, which may better support health and overall well-being.