Here’s a novel (COVID-19) idea.. Whilst citizens are at home flattening the COVID curve, Healthcare professionals can steepen the digital curve in order to fight this invisible enemy.

Following an excruciating few weeks of watching the situation in China , Italy and Spain unfold - SA has now seen its first 2 deaths resulting from COVID-19. 

Digitisation of healthcare is no longer a necessity. It’s a priority, and is increasingly being used on the frontlines of the Corona Virus crises, in an all out attempt to fill an information void online.

Digitisation is proving to ensure:

- Sharing of real time medical findings and stats to improve treatment of the virus
- Protocols to reduce the rate of infection in healthcare settings
- Daily case sharing for collaborative virtual treatment
- Sourcing of equipment and supplies, ventilators, surgical masks, medicine, etc.
- Increase physician supply through geographic load balancing 
- Maximise workforce potential by using quarantined physicians to provide virtual care

As much as the use of social media platforms has been an invaluable source of information sharing and crowd sourcing, having industry sensitive information on mainstream digital resources can prove to have its own challenges, which can hinder the very progress in which digital platforms work to achieve:

- Unsecured, unencrypted case management 
- Profiles with unvalidated credentials/sources.
- Unmonitored, misinformation (exacerbating social unrest and fear)
- Several siloed approaches/platforms
- Public, mainstream engagement platforms used by physicians for collaboration*
As a free, secure social networking platform, exclusively for Healthcare professionals, MediFellows can provide the following in doing our part during this pandemic:

1. Healthcare professional profiles are verified - ensure that posted findings and research are from credible profiles, in which you can easily access

2. Timeline - Follow posts and engage with other individuals, communities or businesses around new COVID-19 updates

3. Medichat - Private and group chatrooms for the purposes of collaboration with colleagues from other parts of the world - share voice notes, PDFs, CSV docs and other functionality, including real time push notifications

4. Businesses in the Healthcare space - What industry are doing to assist with the COVID-19 efforts - open discussions from their profiles, and daily updates to your timeline. 

5. Medical Communities - (Public, private or secret groups) provide dedicated forums for important discussions, findings, virtual events and research

And please continue to watch this space for two new updates:

1. Our new live streaming and virtual conferencing facilities, soon to be launched. 

2. In addition to the mobile app, our Web app will be launched in May, providing flexibility of format and access - whether you are quarantined, in the hospital, in front of patients, or on the move.

The step by step protocols learned in medical school are no longer fast, nor efficient enough, to tackle the real time issues of a contagion that has spread as fast as COVID-19. 

It is now, more than ever, that healthcare professionals need to introduce digital tools into their toolbox.

Let MediFellows be your vehicle for collaboration during this time.

References:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-24/covid-19-mysteries-yield-to-doctors-new-weapon-crowd-sourcing 
https://fortune.com/2020/03/24/doctors-social-media-develop-coronavirus-treatments/ 
https://www.healthitanswers.net/telemedicine-2020-coronavirus-edition-3-25/ 
https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2020/03/20/how-digitizing-healthcare-can-transform-patient-care/#20ab8808317e

*Facebook groups include: Physician side gigs (54,000-members), Physician Community (11,000-members), PMG COVID subgroup (30,000-members)