Geekwire Health Tech

Much of the current focus in health care is rightly on the near-term challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. But beyond the current crisis, health care technology veterans are already seeing major changes that promise to become permanent realities -- from the sudden boom in telemedicine, to regulatory shifts impacting health care billing, to the use of location data to track the disease. "Most interesting is what's going to happen when this is over," says Anne Weiler, the co-founder and former CEO of Seattle health tech startup Wellpepper, recently acquired by Caravan Health. "I don't think people are going to be satisfied with going back to the status quo, because these other things are now working." "I think these regulatory changes represent a big shift in how health care will be delivered beyond 2020," adds Nirav Shah, CEO of Sentinel Healthcare, a neurologist and the former stroke director at Swedish Hospital in Seattle. Sentinel recently launched a real-time fever tracking app for COVID-19 cases, and tod