Collaborative Approach of Research And Health

Col­lab­o­ra­tion on the basis of inter­dis­ci­pli­nary and inter­pro­fes­sion­al ele­ments has always been cru­cial in any research and care-based set­ting. And why not; when there are experts com­ing from var­ied spe­cial­ized out­looks, bet­ter out­comes are what one can expect from any giv­en scenario.

The World Health Orga­ni­za­tion has always giv­en thrust to inter­pro­fes­sion­al edu­ca­tion which under­lines the fact that it is piv­otal to estab­lish a col­lab­o­ra­tive and a prac­tice-ready health work­force so as to bet­ter be pre­pared for the unknown health needs that can arise from nowhere.

That said there are loads of obsta­cles that come in the path of inter­dis­ci­pli­nary and inter­pro­fes­sion­al part­ner­ships rang­ing from frame­works that are rigid and incom­pat­i­ble to a lack of tar­get­ed fund­ing source that is trust­ed. The only sil­ver lin­ing com­ing out of pan­dem­ic is the moti­va­tion that it has pro­vid­ed to var­i­ous spe­cial­ists from uniden­ti­cal dis­ci­plines and a mul­ti­tude of pro­fes­sions to fight togeth­er in over­com­ing the dif­fi­cul­ties and dif­fer­ences that have been in preva­lence. Anoth­er leaf of expe­ri­ence to take out from the cur­rent pan­dem­ic is that the researchers have had more and bet­ter access to both nation­al as well as inter­na­tion­al funds as the strife to devel­op to the point vac­cines in order to deplete the ris­ing scale of infec­tion has been more than ever.

Vaccine Development – Eyeing the pinnacle of collaboration 

When the process of vac­ci­na­tion began across the world, peo­ple from all walks of life expressed their con­cerns about receiv­ing them, and why not! The time­line of vac­cine devel­op­ment as we are all con­di­tioned to believe takes much longer than what hap­pened exclu­sive­ly in the case of COVID-19. To gauge the effec­tive­ness and safe­ty of any vac­cine before the pan­dem­ic struck, took any­thing between 10–15 years, and here we were get­ting access to a jab that was devel­oped in a year’s time. So how come, some­thing phe­nom­e­nal like this occurred? Well, the answer lies in inter­pro­fes­sion­al col­lab­o­ra­tion and the thought and imple­men­ta­tion of which led to gen­er­ous funding.

A decade or two down the line, when we look back and cite an exam­ple of inter­dis­ci­pli­nary and inter­pro­fes­sion­al part­ner­ship, the devel­op­ment of the COVID-19 vac­cines will be writ­ten in gold­en let­ters. Noth­ing can match the whole of the indus­try come togeth­er and fight it out against a pan­dem­ic envelop­ing the entire world. Just look at the col­lab­o­ra­tion that took place; AstraZeneca got the sup­port of Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty, while Mod­er­na & NIH teamed up for their vac­cine and BioN­Tech col­lab­o­rat­ed with Pfiz­er. To be fair to trans­par­ent and col­lab­o­ra­tive approach as well as think­ing, some of the best out­comes that have paci­fied the world have come through them and that too in a mat­ter of not even a year, just months. The back­bone of any devel­op­ment is fund­ing and this one-of-a-kind urgency required loads of it. Fund­ing bod­ies most­ly divide the funds into projects and dis­ci­plines, but these were extra­or­di­nary times that required extra­or­di­nary moves. In the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca, the entire gamut of vac­ci­na­tion devel­op­ment was called Oper­a­tion Warp Seed which went all out in devel­op­ing, man­u­fac­tur­ing, and dis­trib­ut­ing the vac­cines in what­ev­er short time was allo­cat­ed. As far as Europe is con­cerned, it was Euro­pean Com­mis­sion that went on to pledge $8 bil­lion that involved the COVID-19 research and the devel­op­ment which went into it. The entire era of COVID-19 has giv­en a new life to the debate of why a col­lab­o­ra­tive approach is the need of the hour and must be paid heed to.

Collaborative Clinical Setting

And it is not only the research where col­lab­o­ra­tion tops the charts but in clin­i­cal set­tings as well where to the point com­mu­ni­ca­tion between health experts and the pub­lic, in gen­er­al, was pos­si­ble due to effec­tive part­ner­ships. Com­mu­ni­ca­tion, col­lab­o­ra­tion, and coor­di­na­tion are the essence of mak­ing things work and which is what took place at the time of COVID-19. This all has in a way led to health­care work­ers not get­ting bogged down because of the strain that they have had due to the con­sis­tent influx of COVID-19 patients. Inter­pro­fes­sion­al col­lab­o­ra­tion is not new to clin­i­cians as it is a prac­tice of health work­ers to engage in stronger com­mu­ni­ca­tion every time across depart­ments and between spe­cial­ists, so as to have a holis­tic focus on patient mon­i­tor­ing and care. The inpa­tient and out­pa­tient physi­cians sce­nario has been in exis­tence for a long time. As hos­pi­tals do not have advanced knowl­edge of patients com­ing-in in unless they are vis­it­ing for anoth­er round, it is the fre­quent under­stand­ing amongst the inpa­tient and out­pa­tient physi­cians that paves the road. In the case of COVID-19, the spir­it with which the col­lab­o­ra­tion took place has raised the bar even high­er. Although COVID-19 treat­ment is very dif­fer­ent from the reg­u­lar ones, com­mu­ni­ca­tion and that too time­ly one at that, between spe­cial­ists, crit­i­cal care, ER, and oth­ers need­ed to be impec­ca­ble. And that’s not it. Access to med­ical records across depart­ments has been a key fea­ture dur­ing the time that we have gone through and that has been pos­si­ble due to con­sis­tent inter­dis­ci­pli­nary care.

Checking The Mental Stiffness

Men­tal health has also been a bone of con­tention in the entire world. Trav­el restric­tions, be it domes­tic or inter­na­tion­al, or reg­u­lar move­ment of peo­ple has led to a series of events that have had a severe impact on the over­all men­tal well-being of pop­u­la­tions of all ages. Again inter­dis­ci­pli­nary part­ner­ship, as well as pro­fes­sion­al col­lab­o­ra­tion, has stepped in to form 10 year goals that are in line with the com­mu­ni­ty of men­tal health research.

Sig­nif­i­cant­ly, a col­lab­o­ra­tion between human capac­i­ty and infra­struc­tur­al capa­bil­i­ties holds the key to suc­cess­ful­ly get­ting rid of the men­tal trau­ma one could go through in such events. In the past year, many ground­break­ing projects that have experts from data sci­ence, neu­ro­science, and peo­ple with issues of men­tal health have come togeth­er to tack­le dis­crep­an­cies and have indeed come out strong.

The holis­tic approach has giv­en an in-depth under­stand­ing of the virus’ impact and has opened gates to more research that can be done. Cross-cul­tur­al data has also stamped its pres­ence on the treat­ment that goes in. The work that has inter­dis­ci­pli­nary and inter­pro­fes­sion­al ele­ments imbibed in it is here to stay and when the knowl­edge is shared across the spec­trum dur­ing the try­ing times which we are in, its rel­e­vance becomes all the more important.