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Out of great crisis often comes marvelous innovation.

 

A classic case in point was the Napoleonic Wars that raged across Europe between 1803 and 1815. While the death and agony on the battlefields were horrifying, it resulted in a dramatic leap forward in surgical techniques.

The Napoleonic Wars provided thousands of opportunities for field surgeons to experiment with new ways of saving lives. It can be said that millions of lives were saved going forward after the wars because of how much better surgical techniques improved as a result.

Today we find the same phenomenon happening as a result of COVID-19.

The pressure to close millions of brick-n-mortar places of commerce created an advanced need for B2C operations to adopt digital commerce capabilities. Numerous tech firms are racing to fill the gap created by the loss of traditional in-person business transactions conducted in offices and shops.

An example is Salesforce Commerce Cloud. It has created a platform that promises to be fast, flexible and able to reach every customer a business interacted with during pre-pandemic times.

The system is further enhanced with new email notification templates, basic analytics reporters and SEO support that can help businesses not only survive but thrive in new ways. In fact, these new forms of commerce may make economic activity more robust and profitable than it was before the pandemic.

A more direct and obvious example of how COVID has accelerated the development of technology is in medical care. A recent example is the creation of a new COVID home-test kit accomplished by Chicago-based Tempus.

Tempus is a precision medical research firm that specializes in the genomic sequencing of DNA samples taken from diseased tissues, such as cancer tumors. The skill-set of the Tempus team was tasked to create a better way for people to test for COVID. It recently announced the release of its iC Home Collection kit. The technology means a medical professional is no longer needed to administer accurate and reliable COVID tests. People can simply do it for themselves in the comfort of their own homes.

The COVID era has also greatly advanced the science of vaccinology. Thanks to the urgent effort to develop a coronavirus vaccine in record time, scientists now have new methods and techniques for developing all types of vaccines at a much faster rate. That means that other diseases beyond COVID may be conquered faster thanks to a leap forward in vaccinology.