Healthcare innovation is more important than ever
Wow, what a difference a few days can make. The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way everyday life looks for all of us. We know it’s going to get worse before it gets better, and the coming days and weeks are going to be challenging — for our families, our communities and our businesses. While there is much uncertainty in our future, one thing is crystal clear: healthcare innovation is more important than ever. Our system is straining, and there is an important role for technology and innovation to help in the short- and long-term.
Many of our member companies are taking heroic steps in this time of crisis. They are giving their solutions away for free, retooling their products to support health needs in a pandemic time, and accelerating research into therapeutics and diagnostic tools.
One example is AgileMD, which solves an immediate problem: When patients arrive at hospitals with symptoms of COVID-19, hospital personnel are currently using paper-based protocols to figure out what to do. AgileMD has worked with leading medical centers to automate screening and management pathways for COVID-19 cases, and can rapidly update them with the latest clinical evidence and guidelines from the CDC. AgileMD is offering their solution at no charge to any hospital that wants it, and they will do all the integration work for free to get them up and running quickly.
For our part, we have shifted all our work to a virtual mode. All of our workshops and mentoring programs are now happening virtually. We continue to help our member companies with their core needs, and are also developing content specific to the world we’re living in now — such as our webinar earlier this week on fundraising during an economic crisis. Stay tuned for more such content for our members and our entire community.
We may all be hunkered down in our home offices, but we’re working together as a team, and as a community, to help in every way we can. We’ve built a page on our website that we’ll keep updated with the latest information on virtual opportunities to learn and connect (on COVID-19 related topics as well as our typical subject matter), resources for businesses that may need financial assistance during this time, volunteer opportunities with our friends at public health organizations like Community Health, and examples of ways the innovators in our community are responding to this crisis.
If you have any other questions or suggestions about what MATTER could be doing right now to help during this time — topics you’d like us to address, questions you have, or ways we can help — don’t hesitate to reach out to info@matter.health or submit your thoughts here.
Many of our partners are on the front lines of this crisis, and many others in our community have solutions and resources that can help. We look forward to working with and supporting all of you in the days and weeks ahead.
Want to read more from MATTER on navigating COVID-19?