The pandemic has digitally transformed those people who could work from home, school at home, and undertake daily life-flows as health citizens tried to keep the coronavirus (and other people) at-a-distance.

“Emerging hand-in-hand with place displacement, activity displacement is simply about the change in how people do things. Almost overnight, school lessons and doctors’ appointments were online. Yoga classes, concerts and weddings were streamed via Zoom,” Fjord Trends 2021 from Accenture Interactive observes.

“Historically, people have often been quick to adopt new digital technology and slower to adapt to what it can help them achieve,” Fjord noted.

But COVID-19 has accelerated peoples’ “adaptation cycles,” with people now “hacking technology” to help them with their displaced lives, rather than adapting their lives around the latest technology advances.

This has been particularly true for health care, inspiring virtual appointments and medical tests administered at home, as growing virtual care platforms support peoples’ self-care for health care.

Fjord points out that health care is no longer “something that happens to people,” but instead is a pursuit where people are playing a more active role.

Most of the 2021 Fjord Trends, listed in the first graphic shown here from the report, support health citizens’ self-care at home or closer-to-home.

Trend 2, Do It Yourself Innovation, provides the most direct force on re-shaping health care in the pandemic, with the defining tagline, “how to enable people to get creative with the way they live.”

In their forecast on “what’s next” for the trend, Fjord IDs health care as a key opportunity area, with the proviso that inclusive design must be a priority.

Health Populi’s Hot Points:  Consider the seven Fjord 2021 trends together, and you’ve got a recipe for telehealth – virtual health platforms that enable people to DIY health/care at home and anywhere, as long as the health citizen can connect to the internet. Mix together “collective displacement” and “liquid infrastructure,” baked with empathy.”

Then add in “sweet teams are made of this,” and you have the making of telehealth enabling health/care across the continuum, as I show in my drawing here. Sweet teams are increasingly inter-disciplinary, including primary care, bundling in mental health, health coaches and nutritionists.

And increasingly, the patient plays a growing, central role in self-care and DIY health care from the home health hub.

This week at CES 2021, I’ll be convening a panel with three telehealth leaders on Tuesday 12th January at 145 pm Eastern time. Jason Gorevic, CEO of Teladoc, Iris Berman, VP of Telehealth Services with Northwell Health, and Varsha Rao, CEO of Nurx, will be brainstorming the current and future state of telehealth. Tune in, and follow tweets via hashtags #CES2021 and #digitalhealth. The session will be broadcast via video-on-demand if you have a ticket for CES 2021, so it you can’t make this live, you can tune in after the meeting.