The rise of virtual care was undoubtedly the feature of 2021 in digital health, but it was in the more mundane and yet essential area of online appointment booking and patient management solutions that characterised the third quarter of the year in Australian and New Zealand eHealth. Both countries experienced delays in rolling out technology to manage vaccination bookings that we believe should have been solved in 2020, when it became clear that a global mass vaccination effort was the only way to manage it.

While booking systems were rolled out just in time, but it seems that at the end of 2021, more work still needs to be done. Just this week, HotDoc was adding Pfizer bookings for five to 11-year-olds across Australia and all services were working hard to add slots for booster shots to their systems. It’s pretty clear that we will have to live with the novel coronavirus as new infections rise across an increasingly jaded global populace, not defeat it. Omicron may not be as severe as delta, but it appears we will all get a bit more familiar with the Greek alphabet as we move into the new year.