FIRST towards sustainable development goals. Policymakers can propel wider cloud adoption and unleash even greater innovation by implementing riskbased digital policies like clear Cloud First policies that apply to healthcare, training workers in cloud skills, and collaborating with the private sector to leverage the full spectrum of cloud capabilities for the good of all citizens,” added AWS APJ head of public policy Quint Simon.
MEDICAL TRAVEL IN ASIA REBOUNDING: IHH ASIA
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emand for medical tourism is starting to rebound and will grow beyond pre-pandemic levels as border restrictions ease, according to IHH Healthcare. In an interview with Nikkei Asia, CEO Kelvin Loh said vaccination programmes progressing and borders reopening across Asia will make international patients return, and demand for medical tourism will surpass pre-pandemic levels in the longer term. He added that border controls introduced by several countries to combat COVID-19 have dampened medical tourism. The hospital group highlighted returning patients in various countries. In Turkey, where IHH earned 16% of its revenue from medical tourism, patient numbers returned to normal within a month or two after the country reopened its borders. In Singapore, the company’s hospitals received hundreds of bookings within a week of the city-state extending its quarantine-free entry scheme to Indonesia in late 2021. Before COVID, a quarter of IHH’s total inpatient revenue in Singapore was from international patients. Asia’s economic growth The underlying dynamic for medical travel in Asia is the region’s economic growth. Economic development tends to outpace the rate of medical development in certain countries, so anyone who wants and can afford something that they cannot find locally will go abroad to get it. Healthcare in neighbouring countries, such as Indonesia, is improving but is not yet to the point where it takes away the necessity or desire for medical travel by those with the means to pay for it. Amongst other key strategies to tap growing medical demand will be investments in technology, such as artificial intelligence that could improve the speed and accuracy of care. 8
HEALTHCARE ASIA
Governments and healthcare organisations must build on the momentum of the rapid digitalisation during the pandemic
Accelerating public healthcare innovation
T ASIA
hink tank ACCESS Health International, in collaboration with AWS Institute from Amazon Web Services (AWS), announced a new report titled Overcoming Barriers to Cloud Adoption in Public Healthcare in the Asia-Pacific. The research shows that policymakers and healthcare leaders have an incredible opportunity to unleash further innovation in the healthcare industry. ACCESS Health International Senior Consultant Simeen Mirza said, “Rapid digitalisation during the pandemic has brought about remarkable advances in disease surveillance, telemedicine, and vaccine rollout. To unlock the full potential of digital health, now is an opportune time for governments and healthcare organisations to build on this momentum and take immediate action to solve the pressing challenges that are facing public healthcare today.” “We encourage policymakers and healthcare leaders to make digital transformation on healthcare a priority, so as to reduce costs, improve outcomes, ensure equity of access to healthcare, and accelerate progress
Establishing clarity in healthcare data governance and a cloud-first policy Where there are existing government cloud-first policies, it should be explicitly stated that these also cover healthcare data workloads. A central digital health authority that prioritises using cloud-based technology solutions over other IT solutions can provide a clear transformation roadmap that allows healthcare organisations to optimise infrastructure costs and access scalable IT resources whilst building a connected healthcare ecosystem. A great example of this comes from the UK National Health Service Digital.
Quint Simon
Closing the digital skills gap in the healthcare sector To enable transformative innovation across the healthcare sector, governments need to work with industry to implement educational programs and training to upskill the workforce and to design and build human-centric digital health applications. To accelerate the digitisation drive, governments should empower a designated body to boost capacity building and drive digital initiatives in partnership with the private sector. Training in cloud technology can also improve organisational efficiency.
We encourage policymakers and healthcare leaders to make digital healthcare a priority
Understanding the benefits and security capabilities of the cloud Research respondents in the report also shared that due to a lack of awareness or understanding of the cloud technology, policymakers and healthcare leaders have misconceptions around security and the privacy of cloud-based data. The cloud is secure and can open up opportunities for digital transformation for healthcare systems in Asia Pacific and Japan.
Simeen Mirza
