Welcome to our first edition for 2023, as we keep fingers crossed that a new year will take us one step closer to a post-COVID reality.
Of course, the coronavirus has not gone anywhere, particularly in light of China reportedly facing an eye-watering 900 million cases – or 64% of its population – in recent weeks.
But elsewhere COVID continues to evolve from an acute phase to a chronic one.
There are some things we will never get back from the period in which our State was bunkered down with COVID – the delayed elective surgeries that were never rescheduled and the routine health checks that were missed.
But this month Medical Forum looks ahead at some of the new approaches in medicine, including how we test and treat illness – progress that was made despite the pandemic.
There are some things we will never get back from the period in which our State was bunkered down with COVID – the delayed elective surgeries that were never rescheduled and the routine health checks that were missed.
We also look at changes in how doctors practise their craft, including the use of telehealth, which benefited from COVID by becoming routine rather a rarity in health care as necessity became the mother of invention.
But we reveal that health authorities and medical indemnity insurers are now casting a more critical eye over the use of online consultations where there has been no previous in-person interaction between doctor and patient.
I’m reliably told that many doctors believe the cracking down on online-only consults has come not a moment too soon.