Over the last century, we've seen amazing advancements in
health care for the population worldwide.
However, we have now reached a tipping point in terms of the
cost of health care and the provisions we have to deliver
it.
In the next coming years, we'll have to deal with two issues.
One is that we'll have to operate with resource
constraints.
Two is that we'll have to face a rising burden of chronic
diseases.
What does equitable access mean?
It means that all populations would have the same access to
health care services and products.
But today it's not the case.
We have underserved populations in high income and in low income
countries alike.
To give you an example, it's estimated that by 2030 the world
is going to be short of 10 million health care
professionals, seven of which will be in Middle East and
Africa.
To give you another example, even in the OECD countries, we
observe variations in health outcomes, variations of maternal
mortality of 10X.
So what does it take to truly unlock and get the value out of
digital technologies in health care?
Through 40 interviews and many conversations, we have uncovered
five main enablers to better leverage digital, deliver value
for our health care systems.
So what are those five enablers?
First of all, data: we need to unlock the value from data.
We need standardized data and we need to be interoperable.
We need to combine health data with other types of data.
Second, we need technology and analytics to come together to
provide the platform to leverage those data and we need to
implement things like a unique patient ID.
Third, we need better funding and incentives for digital.
That means we need to stop paying for digital on top of
other care and instead pay for digital as part of of combined
hybrid digital physical care pathway.
Fourth, we need better hybrid care pathways with patients and
implementation capabilities to take the best digital solutions
and transform them from point solutions into an integrated
pathway for the patients.
And fifth, and finally, we need better regulations and policies
that are fit for purpose.
Regulations and policies will always lag the innovation, but
what we need to do is increasingly move to innovate
and collect better data on the regulations and policies. It's
going to take
working across both governments and private providers together
have come up with solutions that address whole pathways, not just
point solutions.
We're starting to see some of that also developing, but it
will require a change in incentives as well as the data
that we're collecting, how it's analyzed, and taking a very
consumer centric approach to it
to do this. We can then think about how we can fully digitize
the front end and augment the back end of health care to
provide a new way to deliver care for the future