Ultimately, said Deloitte Australia telco, media & entertainment leader Will Castles, the report showed that many upwards trends are being driven by the COVID-19’s economic and societal impacts, with a greater take-up of video, virtual and cloud technologies undeniable. 

“A range of enterprise and consumer technologies — from 5G to the cloud to virtual reality — will continue to offer opportunities to the worldwide business ecosystem,” Mr Castles said.

“All of the trends this year were shaped to some extent by the global pandemic, accelerating change by years in some areas and throwing up some interesting curveballs in others, and creating significant new challenges and opportunities in 2021 and beyond.”

Breaking it down, the Deloitte report shined a spotlight on how many sectors, including the education and health industries, have had to rely on virtual tools for much of the pandemic. 

As a result, the giant predicts the percentage of virtual video visits to doctors will rise to 5 per cent globally in 2021, up from an estimated 1 per cent in 2019. As for the local market, Deloitte predicted Australia will exceed the global average for telehealth adoption with more than 10 per cent of Australians regularly using telehealth services in 2021.

“COVID-19 has jumpstarted a worldwide trend of telemedicine, including video-based doctor visits. The pandemic not only necessitated the elimination of regulatory barriers to such visits but also helped consumers better understand and leverage video calling apps, especially consumers over the age of 65,” the report noted.

“Many observers and service providers believed telehealth would take years to achieve widespread adoption across Australia but COVID-19 rocked the telehealth landscape and was the catalyst for change.”

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The next five years are set to see a shift to virtual health as a consumer norm, Deloitte noted, with the use of digitally enabled health services – such as apps for preventative health, care and recovery – on track to “grow exponentially”.

“Virtual health will enable consumers to move up the health continuum, changing not just the way healthcare is provided and accessed but also supporting the strong demand for wellbeing enabled by wearables and connected homes,” it said.

Mr Castles said solutions in this space will require collaboration on delivery models and ecosystems to deliver quality virtual health care.

“For this shift to happen, business, government and other stakeholders will need to be proactive and creative in building the right policy settings, delivery models and ecosystems to deliver quality healthcare in a virtual context,” he said.

“To maintain the momentum created by COVID-19 they will need to capitalise on this now. We see this as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to dramatically improve equality of access to both basic and more advanced healthcare solutions – particularly in an Australian context – so let’s not waste it.”