If you are reading this, you probably have recently received several emails from organizations and consulting clients that reflect the impact COVID is having on (biomedical) innovation and entrepreneurship.

Virtually every aspect of life has been impacted, but the effects on biomedical and clinical innovation and entrepreneurship vary, depending on where you are in the drug, device, diagnostic, digital health, medical technology or value chain.

Examples include:

1. A freeze on hiring and investing
2. Closing facilities
3. Downsizing or shelving R/D projects
4. Creating and working with virtual teams
5. Clinical trial interruption
6. Leadership and employee quarantines
7. Revising travel, entertainment and meeting policies
8. Sick leave and health coverage changes
9. Global supply chain interruption
10. Skittish investors
11. Failure to scale telemedicine, remote sensing and virtual care companies in the face of a surge in demand
12. Rightsizing your workforce while trying to win the war for talent
13. The shift to online education and training
14. Macroeconomic headwinds and a possible global recession
15. A credit and liquidity crunch
16. Stock market volatility and uncertainty
17. The health impact of social isolation

Here is the good news.

1. There is a sense of urgency to fix long standing problems with sick care in the USA
2. The fixes are likely to have long lasting impact
3. Shifting sick care to healthcare will accelerate
4. The best time to create a business is during a recession
5. The political, regulatory, reimbursement and economic landscape will change
6. New products, services and business models will rise from the ashes
7. Patients and doctors will change behaviours they should have done long ago (washing your hands)
8. We are applying lessons learned from previous medical and economic calamities
9. Technology helping us create new weapons faster. PCR technology was used to create a test in a matter of weeks.
10. While pandemics drive people apart, when this one is over, maybe people will start playing nice with each other again
11. Investors are excited to write checks during the pandemic
12. Stalled dissemination and implementation of digital health technologies will accelerate

This too shall pass. Once again, a crisis is a horrible thing to waste. Here are some tips on how to innovate during a crisis.

Arlen Meyers, MD, MBA is the President and CEO of the Society of Physician Entrepreneurs on Twitter@ArlenMD and Facebook.