Will technology make healthcare more affordable?

Can technology save us all?

When it comes to healthcare, the answer seems to be yes, if the human touch is not lost: People collaborating to find solutions and focusing more on preventing illness are key to a healthier future for Asians.

This was one of the topics discussed at Philips’ recent Third ASEAN Symposium on Access to Healthcare held in Jakarta, Indonesia, from May 19 to 20. The symposium, which focused on making healthcare more affordable, accessible and available to ASEAN countries, brought together doctors and healthcare professionals from all over the region to discuss the challenges facing the industry today and find possible solutions.

“Technology can bridge the gap between urban centers and remote, rural communities,” said Wayne Spittle, senior vice president and CEO of Philips Healthcare-Multi Country Region/Asia-Pacific.

He cited one example in the Philippines: Philips partnered with the Philippine Heart Center to introduce the Easy Web — or E-Web — Healthcare system.

“This online system linking the Heart Center to doctors in remote locations allows experts based in Manila to offer clinical expertise to their colleagues in rural areas by diagnosing heart conditions,” Spittle said. “If they get a difficult case they can transmit images from the CT scan, ECG and other diagnostic machines through the Internet for review at the PHC.”

The E-Web project was so helpful it was extended last year, expanding its network and increasing the number of equipment. “The patients on the receiving end are given access to the country’s cardiac experts without ever having to leave their home,” says Spittle. “Philips is committed to ensuring many such remote patient-management solutions are up and running, supporting those who cannot afford to travel to metropolitan hospitals.”

Another high-tech product Philips offers is DirectLife, a program that helps clients get fit and manage their weight by monitoring their level of physical activity and giving them feedback for analysis.

“We look at people holistically now, starting with the patient at the center,” says Kevin Haydon, executive vice president and CEO of Philips Global Sales and Service International, Philips Healthcare-The Netherlands. “We can deliver affordable and accessible healthcare for the patient anywhere in the world. That’s our mission and vision now: prevention and early protection through meaningful innovations.”

The Poor & Elderly’s Access To Quality Healthcare

Communicable diseases such as dengue, TB and malaria continue to flourish in the region and by 2050, according to Haydon, there will be two million people in the 60-plus category living longer but getting older and sicker with chronic illnesses such as cancer and diabetes.

“In Southeast Asia, 27 million deaths occur each year among 30- to 69-year-olds who are often the head of their households,” he says.

Consequently, one of the toughest issues currently being faced is affordability, and how it affects the poor and the elderly’s access to quality healthcare. Two Philippine delegates spoke on the subject: Brillo Reynes, senior vice president of the Development Bank of the Philippines (DBP), and Carlos da Silva, executive director of the Association of Health Maintenance Organization of the Philippines.

“The DBP is a government financing institution aligned with the Philippine government,” explained Reyno. “Because of problems with debt servicing after the Asian crisis, many infrastructure projects couldn’t be continued.”

He said that poverty, more than the elderly, is the most critical barrier in accessing healthcare availability. “Since the Philippine population is a very young population, growing at two percent a year, the elderly population is small. We should tie up with other stakeholders: local government units (LGUs), the private sector — financing catalysts that bring everybody together. We need private participation to upgrade government hospitals, strong management, technical expertise, and micro-level projects addressing hospital facilities and rural health units.”

Improving health and reducing infant mortality are also key. Reyno advocated working with Philippine health insurance companies and empowering midwives. “We have to make them more business-minded for sustainability and income generation.”

Da Silva said that in the Philippines, hardly any organized private entity caters to the needs of the elderly. “Only in some identified areas of the Philippines does the Department of Health have a division that combines the elderly and the disabled.”

Barangay health centers are supposed to cater to the health of all citizens, as well as the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), which has programs for the elderly and LGUs. “The DSWD used to have training programs for caregivers,” Da Silva said. “This has since been discontinued. The elderly suffer from acute illness that requires attention and resources. Or they develop chronic and progressive illness that requires prolonged and expensive care and services so there’s more need for rehabilitation.”

The answer? Healthcare that is preventive rather than curative. The four “I”s of geriatrics are: 1) improvement of mobility; 2) impairment of memory; 3) incontinence and 4) iatrogenesis, adverse effects from treatment unwittingly caused by doctors.

“Except for one or two that offer healthcare up to 75, no HMO offers geriatric care programs,” Da Silva says. “The elderly are here to stay, and access and cost are important factors.”

Shortage Of Healthcare Workers

Another pressing issue that was discussed is the shortage of healthcare workers, thanks to the continuing brain drain to the west, a problem that afflicts not only the Philippines but also the world at large. “Nurses and doctors from leading hospitals in the Philippines and Malaysia are lured away, especially to Europe and the Middle East, where their salaries may be up to four times that offered locally,” notes Spittle.

“If every Filipino nurse in the world went home, half the systems of the world would collapse,” said Dr. Michael Moreton, international medical coordinator of the Bangkok Dusit Hospital in Thailand.

In Indonesia, for example, where healthcare conditions are very similar to the Philippines, there’s only one doctor for 10,000 people, as compared to the five-to-10,000 elsewhere in the region.

“The reason is poverty and the culture it has created,” said Da Silva. “In the Filipino family, those who can afford to send their kids to college send them to nursing school because they want them to go abroad: ‘Earn more and help the family.’ Even the Philippine government, OFWs that have left are called “ang bagong bayani (the new heroes)” because they send back millions in remittances that compose 10 percent of GDP.”

A few of the Philippine healthcare professionals who attended the symposium felt that the outflow was a fact of Filipino life that needed to be addressed as such. “With the advent of global healthcare, we must think about workforce disengagement,” said Alma Rita Jimenez, president and COO of St. Francis Cabrini Medical Tourism Park. “Looking at the emerging trend where people would like to see more of the world, it’s not about living the dream or material benefits anymore. It’s a different paradigm of mobility of workforce, the world getting smaller and the need to go into the systematic replacement of people.”

The third crucial issue tackled at the symposium was integrating information technology — data like medical patient records, hospital systems, healthcare statistics, scientific research and machine output.

“With technology set to play a critical role in healthcare delivery,” said Dr. Hanif Kanji, CEO of Sinophi Healthcare Partners, Hong Kong, “from diagnosis of disease to clinical decision support, integration of the technology is a core requirement for efficient, scalable healthcare delivery and management. Lack of infrastructure also forms a powerful impediment to the introduction of telemedicine solutions in remote, poor areas.”

Innovative, Meaningful Solutions

With the rate of change accelerating and people demanding more choices in healthcare, how is the industry gearing up to meet their needs and expectations?

Philips, for one, has invested in building a 37,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art healthcare learning facility for the Asia-Pacific in Singapore. “The center is the first of its type provided by a healthcare company in ASEAN and we’re both proud and honored to lead the way in training workers around the region to the highest world standards,” said Spittle.

This year, Philips is also mounting its Index for Health and Well-Being, a major study on the health and well-being of people across the ASEAN region. Addressing topics like stress, eating, sleep and the healthiness of the physical environment, this year the study will be conducted in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines.

“At the end of the year, the results will be compared against a number of other countries worldwide in order to make a comparison of global trends in people’s feelings towards their health,” adds Spittle, “to provide communities, healthcare systems and governments with a collective view of the current status and needs of patients and their care providers, and to ensure considered solutions to address the healthcare challenges faced by the region.”

Locally, Philips supplies medical equipment to hospitals like St. Luke’s Medical Center in Fort Bonifacio Global City, and Spittle says they will continue to work with both the government and the private sector to improve healthcare delivery. “Hospitalization is a tremendous financial burden, so patients would prefer prevention and disease management in their homes rather than hospitalization,” he says. “Our healthcare systems of the future will to focus much more on prevention, screening and early diagnosis.”