Page 136 - COVID-19: The Great Reset

June 2020, higher (at that time) than that of any US airline.
Concurrently, large online companies like Amazon and Alibaba

expanded decisively in the O2O business, particularly in food
retailing and logistics.

Trends like telemedicine or remote working that expanded
extensively during the confinement are unlikely to retreat – for
them there will be no return to the status quo that prevailed prior

to the pandemic. Telemedicine, in particular, will benefit
considerably. For obvious reasons, healthcare is one of the most
heavily regulated industries in the world, a fact that inevitably

slows the pace of innovation. But the necessity to address the
pandemic with any means available (plus, during the outbreak, the
need to protect health workers by allowing them to work remotely)
removed some of the regulatory and legislative impediments
related to the adoption of telemedicine. In the future, it is certain

that more medical care will be delivered remotely. It will in turn
accelerate the trend towards more wearable and at-home
diagnostics, like smart toilets capable of tracking health data and

performing health analyses. Equally, the pandemic may prove to
be a boon for online education. In Asia, the shift to online
education has been particularly notable, with a sharp increase in
students’ digital enrolments, much higher valuation for online
education businesses and more capital available for “ed-tech”

start-ups. The flipside of this particular coin will be an increase in
pressure on institutions offering more traditional methods of
education to validate their worth and justify their fees (as we

expand upon a little later).

The speed of expansion has been nothing short of
breathtaking. “In Britain, less than 1 percent of initial medical
consultations took place via video link in 2019; under lockdown,
100 percent are occurring remotely. In another example, a leading

US retailer in 2019 wanted to launch a curbside-delivery business;
its plan envisaged taking 18 months. During the lockdown, it went
live in less than a week – allowing it to serve its customers while
maintaining the livelihoods of its workforce. Online banking

interactions have risen to 90 percent during the crisis, from 10
percent, with no drop-off in quality and an increase in compliance

135