Research resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic: are there alternatives to conduct health research with minimal risk exposure?

As the COVID-19 pandemic emerged and cases surged, non-essential services ground to a halt. Public health researchers had to find ways to adapt their existing research focus to fulfil project funding commitments to clients or redirect research resources to COVID-19 itself. While scientists were used to relying on technology at the stage of sharing their research findings with peers, stakeholders and the public, contact restriction during the pandemic forced them also to turn to technology at the outset of the research process, as the sole means of data collection.