The Healthcare sector has come a long way from the process of simple automation to the integration of HIS across its value chain. Healthcare providers are leveraging usage of IT in their business processes, and it has changed the way hospitals and physicians work. This development is in line with the Healthcare sector’s goal to become more patient-centric.
In order to achieve this goal, many healthcare institutions have started to look to telemedicine and mHealth solutions in order to make services more available to patients. This is a big reason why the Healthcare IT Market in the APAC Region is expected to more than double in size by 2019, growing at a CAGR of 16 percent.
Getting Ahead of the Game with mHealth
Mobile is certainly changing the way the Healthcare industry operates in the APAC region. Different stakeholders in mhealth such as operators, device service providers, healthcare providers, content players, and the Government sector have already launched various services and applications on mobile health across the region.
For instance, mobile operators are providing content-based wellness information services to consumers. A few mobile operators are also providing telemedicine and health call centers in collaboration with healthcare providers; they also provide real-time connectivity for devices to provide remote monitoring.
Device service providers offer tools that gather body vitals and transfer them to back-end servers over mobile networks. Content players provide information-based services either in a standalone offering or in collaboration with mobile operators; some of them have also developed applications that will enhance the efficiency of healthcare providers. In addition, governments of various countries sponsor mobile health services for increasing the efficiency of the healthcare workforce.
Some of the major mHealth deployments in the APAC region are listed below.
Telemedicine Helping to Save Time and Money
Telemedicine is one of the key areas gaining popularity in the APAC region. With the increased use of technology, activities such as physical examination, psychiatric evaluation, and assessments can be done at lower costs, thus providing improved patient experience, standardized quality, and maximum accessibility to a large number of patients.
Telemedicine is one of the largest markets in the Indian Healthcare sector where rural areas constitute 70 percent of the country. The government of India has set a target to provide 2 beds/1,000 people by 2025 to fulfil the goal. The country needs 1.8 million beds in various hospitals, 1.54 million doctors, and 2.4 million nurses. Telemedicine is expected to fill the gap between demand and supply in the Healthcare sector in India. Most of the major hospitals in India have adopted telemedicine services and entered into PPPs.
For instance, DoctorsCabin is a startup based in Thiruvananthapuram, India. The company offers medical consultation via video chat; it has more than 25,000 hospitals and clinics in its network. The major hospitals listed in the company’s network are Apollo Hospitals, Fortis, Dr. Batra’s, and Vasan Eye Care.
Another example is HealthOne, which is an app available on the Salesforce platform. It is a cloud-based offering that provides services such as telemedicine, referral services, digital health knowledge, and EMR. Medical experts use this app for remote consultation as well.
