COVID-19 Impact on Pharmaceutical Packaging in Chemicals and Materials Industry

COVID-19 Impact on Surgical Visualization Products in Healthcare Industry

  • Healthcare
  • Nov 22, 2021

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 and lack of availability of its vaccine.

As a result, the greatest medical challenge in the 21st century is yet to be faced by physicians worldwide. Though the emergence of the virus can be traced back to Asia, many European countries and the U.S. have been struck massively by the pandemic. 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 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 spreading the disease.

According to the weekly epidemiological report of 23rd August 2020 by WHO, a cumulative total of 23 million cases of Coronavirus have been reported globally, and 800,000 patients are dead due to the Coronavirus.

Surgical visualization products are used to improve the quality of images of internal organs with greater resolution. They improve the surgical process and enhance communication between healthcare professionals, specialty clinics, and patients. 3D visualization technology’s incorporation in diagnostics has enabled easy inspection and visualization of organs in 360 views, thereby being the accurate and improved quality of surgery. Surgeons and healthcare professionals widely prefer surgical visualization to evaluate, inspect and treat internal organs from a distance from the target organs without incision. The rise in chronic diseases, advancement in surgical visualization, rising healthcare expenditure are acting as drivers for the global surgical visualization products market. The implications of COVID-19 have considerable influence on the surgical visualization products market. Various factors that indirectly influence the decline in medical surgery procedures include flight cancellations, travel bans, mass quarantine, growing panic among the population, and uncertainty about the future.

Impact on Price

Delay associated with various types of limitations due to the pandemic faced by the manufacturers to fulfill the end product order, which has resulted in less availability of surgery devices in the market. The cost of available devices has increased with several factors. Also, due to the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, manufacturers are forced to find new contract manufacturers and suppliers to move manufacturing activities to different or new facility locations less impacted by the outbreak.

If the COVID-19 continues to spread for prolonged period, then it is estimated that the demand for surgery devices will downgrade by top importer countries. Moreover, top surgical visualization product importers' countries such as the United States and Europe are primarily concentrating on dealing with Coronavirus (COVID-19); due to this reason, demand for these surgical visualization products are decreased from the United States followed by Italy.

In current situations, the manufactures of surgical visualization products are facing difficulties with the existing component supplier or contract, manufacturers who are at risk or closed or not being able to fulfill supply requirements, due to challenges such as extended periods of shut down or workforce are responsible for price fluctuation of surgical visualization products.

Impact On Demand

Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is an infectious disease caused by a SARS-CoV-2 virus, while a large 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. Nearly all the countries have taken initiative action under locked down and social distancing restrictions to minimize the spread of COVID-19. Sudden shrink took place in various surgeries due to affirmative restrictions. Reduction in surgeries across the globe is adversely affecting the on-demand of minimally invasive surgery devices. However, due to lockdown and social distancing restrictions, most of the patient pool prefers virtual visits through video calling or telehealth video visiting.

In compliance with the Centers for Disease Control recommendations, the American College of Surgeons, the Brazilian Society of Plastic Surgery, and the American Society of Plastic Surgeons recommended postponing or canceling elective surgery.

The goal of this recommendation is two-fold: first to minimize patient and visitor traffic in healthcare settings to reduce transmission between patients and healthcare workers and secondly, to preserve essential resources, especially hospital beds, critical care and ventilator supplies, and PPE critical to the safety of patients and healthcare professionals.

Moreover, the decrease in the revenue of the key market players depicted in their quarterly results, such as Johnson & Johnson Services, Inc., among others, gave evidence of the decline in the demand for medical devices due to the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic.

For instance,

  • Johnson & Johnson Services, Inc., reported a decline of 10.5% in its medical devices net sales of the fourth quarter of 2020 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.

Impact on Supply

The COVID-19 pandemic has transformed various organizations’ business environments; supply availability has been hampered by many issues, including export and travel restrictions by some producing countries and lockdowns that have forced suppliers to (temporarily) shut down.

Healthcare organizations have been firmly monitoring the supply chain with the assumption that the COVID-19 outbreak may adversely impact the supply chain of medical devices, including shortages of surgical visualization products or potential disruptions in its supply chains to minimize supply chain crises.

For instance,

  • The Zimmer Biomet spine, dental and CMFT segment sales have a decrease of 10.3% and found a decline in total sales from USD 1,161.3 million in 2019 to USD 1,043.7 million in 2019. These decline in sales are due to disruption of the supply chain and change in the focus to COVID 19

Several organizations are looking forward to improving and diversifying supply chain models to manage such a crucial situation. A diversified supply chain model anticipated minimizing the export of medical devices and increasing end-to-end visibility. The resulting COVID-19 pandemic has shown the various ways for supply chain management, which may be effective within a remote working environment.

STRATEGIC DECISIONS BY MANUFACTURERS

A large pool of population affected by COVID-19 virus and spread been expanding across the world in the last few months. Various market players are creating new strategies to deal with the COVID-19 outbreak challenges.

The companies are now opting for digital media such as telecommunication, mobile applications, webinars, and other digital media to support the patient required to tackle the pandemic situation and increase their revenue and growth. Moreover, to accomplish the market demand, small market players are utilizing the partnership agreement strategy. It is projected that these strategies are anticipated to escalate up the company revenue and its growth in the forecast period.

For instance,

  • In September 2021, Smith & Nephew launched LENS 4K surgical imaging system, a state-of-the-art visualization platform designed for end-to-end 4K imaging, which has created a persistent revenue-generating path for the company.
  • In January 2016, CONMED Corporation completed the acquisition of privately-held SurgiQuest, Inc. This acquisition has strengthened company’s leadership in the market.

Furthermore, for the economic recovery after the pandemic of COVID-19, the manufacturers of surgical visualization products have to adopt several types of strategic initiatives in terms of increasing R&D activities conduct numerous types of market surveys to know the current situation and mindset of consumers towards their need. The increasing R&D activities will help the manufacturers to launch the advanced equipment by knowing the advanced technology or need of the end user.

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 surgery medical devices.

The mass quarantined imposed by the government put a stop to transportation, international travel, among others which reduced the chances of such surgery. The market player has experienced decreasing customer demand for its products beginning in the second half of its first quarter of 2020.

Thus, the COVID-19 pandemic has an adverse impact on the market, affecting the price, supply, and demand of surgical visualization products. However, in the crisis call, market players, government bodies, and healthcare organizations are working closely with healthcare professionals, customers, and patients to better public health.

However, companies and government bodies exclusively concentrate on making the most effective and best contribution to control the spread of the virus and save lives. They are also ramping up the production of essential medication to a new level and ensuring that speed doesn’t affect or destroy the quality of products.