Assisting small Caribbean islands in health sector planning post pandemic: A brief discussion

Abstract

The Caribbean Region has been one the hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic due to vaccine inequity, human resource constraints, and pre-existing infrastructural constraints, which led to countries taking viral mitigation and prevention measures for instance border lockdown and states of emergency. While at that phase, treating COVID-19 patients has been the number one priority, several other health services have been neglected, threatening public health. During that period there was significant disruption of healthcare delivery to patients with Chronic non-communicable Diseases in the region which deteriorated capacity issues in the health system, for example Human Resource Deficiencies, Financing of the Health Sector, Governance, and a lack of Health Information Systems. This paper provides an overview of how pandemic insurance claims and big data analytics tools can assist in gaining insights into the current state of the population’s health. Big data and analytical approaches provide a variety of solutions, including the detection of current COVID-19 cases and the forecasting of future outbreaks which can aid in obtaining some insight into the present state of the health of the population.