A New Normal: Getting Digital Ready for Post-Pandemic Recovery

Part 1: How COVID-19 is transforming Healthcare and Workspaces

Before the outbreak of COVID-19, it was almost impossible for people to imagine how a pandemic could fundamentally change the world and our daily lives. Now due to COVID-19 the global economy could suffer up to US$8.8 trillion in losses, equivalent to 6.4% to 9.7% of global gross domestic product (GDP) according to the Asian Development Bank.[1] As the pandemic endures, we are seeing its impact on all industries around the world.

Faced with unexpected disruptions and changing customer behaviors, it is critical for businesses to rethink how they can support global, distributed workforces and shore themselves up for a world beyond COVID-19. Enterprises across all industries are reassessing their operating environments and retooling their businesses to navigate volatile and uncertain times. In this series of blog posts, we look at how different industries are being impacted and reshaped by the pandemic, starting off with healthcare and workspaces.

Healthcare: leveraging technology to transform patient experience

There is no doubt that the effects of COVID-19 on healthcare go beyond the disease itself.  The global spread of the pandemic has created increasing pressure to predict surges of patients and their impact on individual care facilities. Healthcare is going through a transformation, harnessing new ways to see and treat patients, collaborate and share patient information.

To deliver targeted and effective medical care, organizations rely more on remote monitoring and Internet of Things (IoT) platforms, along with big data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) than ever before. These technologies enable healthcare service providers to effectively and cost-efficiently process and analyse massive amounts of data and gain a wealth of insights.

However, traditional IT infrastructures cannot integrate the digital services, vast data sources, and real-time analytics needed to support remote monitoring and deliver personalized patient experiences. With Platform Equinix, healthcare service providers are able to achieve real-time, secure communications and data exchange with patients, partner ecosystems, and network and cloud providers to ensure uninterrupted services and improve outcomes.

According to the third annual Global Interconnection Index (GXI), the healthcare industry in Asia-Pacific is expected to increase interconnection bandwidth by 75% CAGR by 2022.

The huge volumes of patient data generated during the pandemic also create challenges to the industry. By leveraging Equinix Cloud Exchange Fabric^TM (ECX Fabric^TM), healthcare service providers can meet fast-changing capacity demands in minutes, with no additional equipment or physical access needed. They can increase or decrease bandwidth globally on all virtual connections to top clouds via the ECX Fabric Portal or APIs to deliver timely solutions to patients.  This on-demand service provides the industry with the scalability and availability required to process and analyse massive amounts of data.

Workspace: Achieving business continuity during a pandemic

When we look at the impacts brought by the pandemic from a boarder perspective, all industries are facing the same problem of remote operations. SMEs have been especially hit by this, as many were not digitally prepared to deal with this unexpected situation.

Workspace solutions provider Servcorp, an Equinix customer, has stepped up to support its customers’ in responding to these challenges and still deliver on digital transformation, helping them transition to remote operations and ensure business continuity. “Many organizations were not prepared and subsequently have turned to Servcorp to assist with transitioning to remote operations and support their digital transformation,” comments Daniel Kukucka, CTO, Servcorp.

With its Virtual Office offering, Servcorp’s customers can improve the operational efficiency of their business with a range of flexible services. Thanks to Servcorp receptionists, enterprises will have their business calls aggregated, answered and directed to the appropriate person to make sure they never miss a single important call, even when working remotely. Moreover, Servcorp is providing free use of its Smartphone VoIP application, Onefone, allowing companies to make and receive calls on their business phone numbers remotely and avoiding the need to share personal mobile numbers which can cause data privacy issues.

Deploying in Equinix’s IBX data centers across Americas, Asia-Pacific and EMEA gives Servcorp access to best-of-breed solutions for network services, cloud services, managed services and compliance in each region, ensuring consistent performance for its customers across the globe. Through Equinix’s global footprint and network-dense data centers, latency is significantly reduced and quality of service is enhanced as hops are reduced during VoIP routing. Equinix’s private interconnection enables Servcorp to bypass the public Internet and enjoy secure, high-bandwidth and low-latency connectivity to ensure its services are uninterrupted.

Riding out the storm

For all of the uniqueness of today’s business climate, the impact to enterprise is unlikely to only be short term. It is undeniable that companies are pushing deeper into digital transformation and those who are digital ready can mitigate its impact, build resilience into their operations and gain competitive advantages for the future. Download the Volume 3 of the GXI here to learn why interconnection matters and how Equinix can help you to speed up your digital journey.

In my next blog post, we will continue to discuss how industries like retail and manufacturing are adapting to change and embracing digitization.

[1]https://www.adb.org/news/covid-19-economic-impact-could-reach-8-8-trillion-globally-new-adb-report