The pandemic accelerated many Very Big Deals in digital health venture capital investment, mergers and acquisitions, and the re-emergence of SPACs in health care. A closer look at this activity points to a key trend that will persist post-pandemic: that telehealth and the broader theme of virtual care is re-shaping how health care is delivered.

This graphic comes out of my current thinking about telehealth across the continuum of care. Before the pandemic, the dominant work-flow for telemedicine was for triage, primary care and pediatrics (think: your child registers a 105-degree fever on a Saturday night and the pediatrician’s office is closed).

In the COVID-19 era, clinicians and health systems stood up virtual care across the board as-required. One are, tele-mental and -behavioral health, is meeting the moment, with virtual therapy meeting up with under-served demand from before the public health crisis. With mental health the epidemic inside and beyond the pandemic, this area is fast-growing with anxiety and stress part of daily lives in 2021.

Read more on the virtual care phenomenon in my latest post published in the Medecision Liberation blog here.