People have been working on digital transformation of health care for decades, but the COVID pandemic has added urgency to the challenge. This is creating a window of opportunity to reinvent how the health care system works—for example, the United States is on track to surpass more than 1 billion virtual office visits by the end of the year, even though only about a quarter of health-care organizations offered virtual visits before the pandemic. But of course, we still need to deal with important issues like privacy, security, and usability of all this new technology. ITIF VP Daniel Castro joins regular Innovation Files host Jackie Whisman to discuss these issues with Pat Combes, worldwide technical leader for health care and life sciences at Amazon Web Services.

Related:

• Nigel Cory and Philip Stevens, “Building a Global Framework for Digital Health Services in the Era of COVID-19” (ITIF, May 2020). 
•  Daniel Castro, “Improving Health Care: Why a Dose of IT May Be Just What the Doctor Ordered” (ITIF, October 2007).