Overview Aftermath of Covid-19 and Government Role
The first case of the COVID-19 pandemic was found in Wuhan, China. This pandemic has influenced the whole planet with its major impacts on the economy and businesses across the globe. The COVID-19 spread worldwide in unprecedented ways due to its high infectious and contagious nature.
The virus has spread across all regions ranging from North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Middle East, and Africa up to South America. The COVID-19 has been declared as a pandemic by WHO due to its increased spread across the globe.
Various countries announced the complete lockdown just after the declaration of COVID-19 as a pandemic, such as the U.S., India, Germany, and China, to protect them from the spread of the disease. The government imposed lockdown rules, and it had significantly impacted the market.
The neurorehabilitation process makes a possible reduction in impairments and disabilities and eventually improves the life of the patient. Examples of neurorehabilitation devices are invasive stimulators, non-invasive stimulators, brain-computer interfaces, and neurorobotics, among others. Current rehabilitation is supported by advanced methods based on biofeedback, transcranial brain stimulation system, and BCI system. The prevalence of neurological diseases, rise in technological advancement, the emergence of robotic rehabilitation, and the effectiveness of gaming systems in neurorehabilitation are factors that are propelling the demand of the global neurorehabilitation devices market. However, the shortage of skilled personnel, the high cost of treatment, stringent government regulation may hamper the global neurorehabilitation devices market.
Impact on Price
Neurological rehabilitation is a program designed for the treatment of people suffering from a disorder or any injury in the nervous system. The devices include non-invasive brain stimulators, robotic neuro systems, brain-computer interfaces, and wearable devices, among others.
Due to the pandemic, there is the delay associated with various types of limitations faced by the manufacturers to fulfill the end product order, which has resulted in the less availability of neurorehabilitation devices in the market and due to which the cost of available devices has increased with the several factors. Also, due to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic outbreak, manufacturers are forced to find new contract manufacturers and suppliers for more manufacturing activities to different or new facilities locations that are less impacted by the outbreak.
Impact On Demand
Neurorehabilitation is an important part of the recovery process that has undergone some brain injury. In the COVID-19 pandemic, various charities have worked effortlessly to provide treatment and support to patients suffering from brain injury. During the pandemic, the demand for neurorehabilitation devices was high, but companies were not able to supply the devices to end-users as various restrictions were imposed by the government, such as a travel ban, closed borders, among others.
Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is an infectious disease caused by a SARS-CoV-2 virus, while a large pool of the population is affected by this COVID-19 virus. Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) causes acute respiratory illness ranges from mild to severe pneumonia with respiratory failure. In order to minimize the spread of COVID-19, nearly all the countries have taken action, such as the implementation of lockdown and social distancing restrictions.
Due to affirmative restrictions, sudden shrink took place in various surgeries.
Moreover, the decrease in the revenue of the key market players depicted in their quarterly results, such as Medtronic, among others, gave evidence of the decline in the demand for the medical device due to the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic.
For instance,
- Medtronic reported a decline of 1% in its brain therapies net sales of the financial results of 2020 as compared to 2019. The reduction was largely motivated by the detrimental effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent deferral to companies of medical procedures
The decline in revenue of brain therapy suggests the detrimental effect of COVID 19 on the neurorehabilitation devices market and hence impacted the demand-supply concept.
Impact on Supply Chain
The consequences of COVID 19 cannot be underestimated. The product and service providers of neurorehabilitation have made efforts by providing services virtually to meet the demands as people were not frequently visiting the hospitals or clinics for the treatment.
The COVID-19 pandemic has transformed many organizations’ business environments; supply availability has been hampered by a number of issues, including export and travel restrictions by some manufacturing countries and lockdowns that have forced suppliers to (temporarily) shut down.
In various countries, neurorehabilitation units have reduced their number of beds, in-patients and out-patient neurorehabilitation centers are restricted to a particular area in order to tackle the pandemic situation
To manage such a critical situation, many organizations are looking forward to improving and diversifying the supply chain model in all aspects. Diversified supply chain model anticipated minimizing the export of medical devices as well as increase end-to-end visibility
STRATEGIC DECISIONS BY MANUFACTURERS
As the reality of COVID-19 dawned upon the world, the manufactures and production units of the companies in the global neurorehabilitation devices market swiftly planned for strategies to cope with the effect of the crisis. Major players in the market took various initiatives to cope up with the situation.
For instance,
- In July 2020, Abbott announced that it had received FDA approval for the use of the Patient Controller App on compatible personal Apple smartphone devices. The approval will allow the patient living with neurological conditions to manage their therapy directly from the personal smartphone
- In 2019, Mount Sinai Health System announced an innovative tele-neurorehabilitation program for stroke patients. This therapy can be taken by patients while at their homes with virtual backing from clinicians
- In 2020, Esko Bionics Holdings, Inc. announced that it had received FDA 501(k) go-ahead to promote its EksoNRTM robotic exoskeleton for patients with acquired brain injury. It is cleared by FDA for spinal cord injury, stroke, or acquired brain injury rehabilitation
These strategies helped the company in coping with the pandemic and ensure business operations, minimize the impact of COVID-19, and providing full support to the government in their efforts to combat the disease and help the front-line workers.
Conclusion
The market is expected to decline due to increased restrictions imposed by various governments leading to the closing of non-emergent healthcare facilities, including procedures such as neurorehabilitation procedures.
It can be concluded that the COVID-19 pandemic situation has an adverse impact on the market, affecting the price, supply, and demand of neurorehabilitation devices. However, in the crisis call, market players, government bodies, and healthcare organizations are work closely with healthcare professionals, customers, and patients for the betterment of public health. The increasing need of neurorehabilitation devices with increasing number of neurological diseases is expected to drive the market in coming years.
