Simon Jones: A Covid catalyst

As we enter another month of government-enforced lockdown, there can’t be many people who haven’t had a catch up or even a pub quiz, on one of the many video calling platforms.

FaceTime, Zoom and even Houseparty have quickly become normal methods for workers and families to keep in contact while working remotely and social distancing.

The technology has also been used by many independent optometrists to triage and remote-consult during the coronavirus lockdown. Indeed, video consultations have this week been rolled out by Specsavers and Locsu’s Cues scheme.

People often refer to ‘things getting back to normal,’ but I can’t help but feel that there won’t be a ‘back to normal’ in the case of telemedicine. The widespread acceptance of video calling is likely to be the catalyst for more remote consultations among many medical professions. Optometry won’t escape that.