Dr Chris Whittle is an ex-anaesthetist and founder of leading online video consultation service Q doctor, which has seen huge demand during the COVID-19 pandemic.

As part of the COVID-19 response, Q doctor has been working with the largest provider of NHS urgent care services to provide remote GP services to people staying in the London-based COVID-19 isolation centre.

The app-based platform has also supported NHS 111 with its first-ever video consultation service and is used by nearly 2000 GP practices, NHS trusts and urgent care services across the country to provide patients with safe, secure, easy remote access to clinical support and advice. The team are certainly not strangers to the importance of cyber security and managing patient data safely and confidentially.

In spite of the undisputed loss the pandemic has caused to families, countries and health systems around the world, COVID-19 has seen unprecedented adoption of new technologies to help manage the crisis.

In many cases, this has included the temporary approval, and in some cases even fast-tracking, of healthtech solutions such as video platforms as a means to support and improve direct care, as well as public and national interests. Inevitably, due to the need to deliver at speed, this has left gaps, particularly in the management and handling of data.

Video is a good example where huge quantities of sensitive data are at stake. We only need to look at the ever popular Zoom platform, whose security flaws were exposed early on in the crisis, to see all too clearly that even IPO’d companies aren’t immune to data breaches. And so, with medical consultations, the stakes are even higher and therefore the need for robust data security is critical.

We’re not out of the pandemic yet, and it also isn’t clear exactly where all these holes are. As the dust begins to settle and we prepare for flattened curve and resurgence scenarios, we must plan for the future of our ‘new-normal’ to ensure that as a sector and industry, we fully appraise and evaluate our practices. Ultimately, we have a duty of care to the government, the NHS, healthcare professionals and most importantly, the public to uphold privacy through the safety and security of sensitive data. Lowered privacy standards must not insidiously become part of a ‘new normal’ and the levels of data collected should be proportional and under NHS organisation control.

Healthtech providers need to be held accountable to appropriate standards, ensuring that users are made aware of how their personal data is used and stored, and who has access and control over it.

It's an important lesson for us all, as one of many that we will take away from these trying times, and so as we begin to transition back to pre-covid standards, health systems and policy makers can also learn from smaller more agile companies who constantly iterate and improve, dropping the unnecessary but keeping the critical.

Together, in collaboration with policy makers, commissioners and healthcare professionals we must agree what a sustainable solution looks like.