Cooperation – Expanding the zone of development

Looking back on the last few years, I get amazed and inspired. It is almost unreal to me that we have been able to treat a worldwide pandemic virus so fast by working together.
COVID-19 is still here, yes. However, we have worked together in a fight against a threatening pandemic, and we managed to keep it down, so we did succeed.

In February 2020, the COVID-19 outbreaks started expanding in many countries. Many were eager to work on the new coronavirus – there where a collective will and purpose to combat COVID-19 and people helped each other in a time of crisis. Everyone clicked into gear and shared their knowledge and experiences. “Different disciplines fit together much more seamlessly than one would have expected.
Within a few months, scientists had published research articles that mapped out protein interactions related to the virus. New features of the SARS-CoV-2 virus was now out and communicated in ways that everyone could understand. A accelerated attempt to discover drug candidates was soon a reality.
Funders, industry partners, scientists, doctors and patients worked together transparently and collegially. An unusual cross-channel conversation began outside of normal peer-groups cooperation’s. Existing connections were strengthened and new ones forged, and output was not only maximized but indeed also accelerated.

I wonder whether the rapid progress made on COVID-19 could be replicated for other diseases? How do we keep same marks on future research collaborations ?

What is the connection between collaboration and quality? We know that scientist do collaborate internationally, especially given the fact that scientific literature is often of a higher impact, and associated with increase in citation, when several scientists from several nations are involved in a study. If scientists do collaborate to expand knowledge, then maybe the novelty is found more frequently when we collaborate and share through different disciplines.

COVID did pause life in many ways for us all, and we were temporarily forced to step out of our comfort zone, and start to re-think, so maybe the answers for an accelerated output lays in the way we collaborate and share knowledge.

Did the pandemic give birth to more creative ways of collaborating within the field of cardiovascular diseases? I read about a small Danish medical technology company who develops state-of-the-art, ambulant long-term ECG monitors, who was given the opportunity to investigate cardiac arrhythmias in patient as an overlooked complication of COVID-19 in partnership with hospitals, but on industrial funds. Isn’t that a perfect example of how output can be maximized across disciplines as result of unusual cross-channel cooperation’s?

From which angle do you see this matter? Can the diversity and structure in the way teams work influence the quality of output? Should we look beyond standard ways to accelerate knowledge?

Another aspect, I have been reflecting on is the push for open data and sharing of knowledge through the last years. Media have definitely had a great role in informing us, however I wonder if making scientific work much more visual available could improve our understanding of the content, and use such tools to connect people across the world to enhance and increase output, by initiating cross-channel conversation outside of normal peer-groups cooperation’s.

I am a typical scientist and I am definitely not in my comfort zone when sharing my thoughts and ideas here, even though I am very creative in my way of thinking. Like many others I have been schooled to only share evidence based knowledge as a scientist. The discussions I want to sparkle here is however aimed to accelerate science and knowledge in a less conservative way- do you think that is possible?