The world around us has rapidly evolved over the past eighteen months or so. Nearly every aspect of our lives has been impacted by the effects of Covid-19, one way or the other. Still, some sectors such as Education and Healthcare remained at the forefront.
Both these sectors have such an important and notable impact on our lives that they simply cannot be ignored. The healthcare sector was at the forefront of the pandemic response. Healthcare providers faced a dual challenge of dealing with routine and Covid-19 patients.
Similarly, the Education sector suddenly came to a grinding halt as soon as we realized the contagious and deadly nature of this virus. However, completely shutting down educational activities for an indefinite period of time was simply out of the question.
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Digital Technologies Boom during the Pandemic
It comes as little surprise that digital technologies experienced an unprecedented boom during the pandemic. Hardly no one disagreed with the potential benefits of digitalization, but every sector was embracing it at their own pace before the pandemic.
However, all this changed when the impact of the pandemic fully kicked in, forcing massive and prolonged lock-downs or strict social distancing protocols. This introduced a sense of urgency to visualize, adopt and implement digital technologies.
Distance Learning – The New Normal
The concept of e-learning or remote education was not entirely new before the pandemic. However, learning is something which most prefer in-person, rather than virtual. Further, the results of distance learning were quite mixed during its early days.
However, education providers were faced with the challenge of delivering education remotely to millions of students in the safety of their homes. This resulted in accelerated digitalization at the campus level, aided by technologies such as Cloud Computing.
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The Cloud and E-Learning
Cloud Service Providers (CSP) like dinCloud came to the immediate rescue of education providers amidst the pandemic. Educators promptly shifted their curricula and other learning content over the Cloud, within the safety of secure cloud data centers.
Shifting of the learning content to the Cloud was followed by hosting entire Learning Management Systems (LMS) over the Cloud. This provided the perfect ground for distance learning in a secure, accessible and conducive environment.
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Cloud Powered Telehealth Rapidly Grows
The same challenges were faced by healthcare providers that were simply overwhelmed with the sheer burden of patients. This posed a dual challenge for them, as they had to care for existing patients as well as the ones needing Covid-19 related care.
What further complicated this scenario was the safety of the healthcare providers themselves. We saw countless talented and dedicated healthcare providers fall victim to the novel corona virus themselves.
So, the Cloud saved the day yet again for healthcare providers by acting as a secure and highly available technology platform for telehealth facilities. However, concerns related to safety of medical records and compliance still remain to be fully addressed.
Related: Cloud Computing Benefits for the Healthcare Sector
A Hybrid Learning and Healthcare Model is the Future
Now, with large scale vaccinations of the global population, we should see things returning to normal over the next few weeks. However, it appears that the benefits reaped via digital technologies such as Cloud Computing will remain quite relevant post pandemic as well.
Many leading analysts believe that both e-learning and telehealth are here to stay in the post pandemic world as well. However, we may ultimately settle for a hybrid model, where learning and healthcare will be a mix of in-person and digitalized interactions.
Conclusion
Digital technologies such as Cloud Computing have played a leading role in pandemic response. We will continue to see the Cloud play an instrumental role in the future as well, to make health and education accessible for the masses under extraordinary conditions.
If you are an education or healthcare provider and looking for accelerated digitalization, dinCloud offers a wide array of solutions for your specific needs.
