BetaGov Blog

Our Brave New World

Posted on May 6, 2020     By Maureen Hillhouse

Although quite different from Aldous Huxley’s dystopian novel, our world has changed beyond our wildest expectations. In efforts to safeguard American citizens from the pandemic, governors took extreme measures to save lives and improve the capacity of healthcare systems to treat the afflicted. For most Americans, these efforts have drastically changed both our personal and professional lives. For most of our partners, this pandemic required hitting the “pause” button on active trials as well as those in development. Rethinking how to optimally provide services while also keeping rules like physical distancing is rightly more of a priority than testing an innovation. But we also have some partners who want to assess what these changes mean, including efforts to document them and the resulting consequences, and whether any will be retained after the pandemic ends. Please know that BetaGov may be able to assist you. Let us know if you want to, for example, develop a COVID-19-specific survey of staff and clients or dig into your data to compare outcomes before and after the pandemic started. Let’s talk about how we might learn from this experience. We are all in this together!