Digital health in Asia Pacific: Making services more sustainable

Healthcare providers need fresh solutions to the challenge of rising chronic illness such as cardiovascular disease, ageing populations, and unequal access to health services if they’re to deliver long-term care that improves patient outcomes. They need sustainable solutions to address affordability. Take the Asia Pacific region, where spending on healthcare per person is now 80 percent higher than it was in 2009.

The latest technology can address these pressures and is the subject of a Deloitte Access Economics report analyzing health provision in nine countries. The analysis identifies potential benefits, such as cost savings of USD 21.6 billion if all nine countries transition their hospital IT to the cloud, equivalent to USD 5,963 per hospital bed.

Redressing health inequity

Tackling health inequity—a recognized challenge across the Asia Pacific region—is another opportunity that cloud-based healthcare solutions can help address.

In Thailand, for example, individuals whose work may be for their family, part time, or within their household, have difficulty accessing health services, along with the unemployed. In New Zealand, those with lower socio-economic status as well as Maori and Pacific peoples are found to experience higher levels of chronic illness than the national average.

Greater connection of services and information using the cloud can help fix these imbalances. For example, the cloud enables new healthcare delivery models, such as telemedicine. When medical records and administration are securely managed via the cloud, practitioners may collaborate on or redirect care more simply.

Benefits of digital healthcare

Strategic use of the cloud can also improve patient experience and outcomes. The report, commissioned by the AWS Institute, cites evidence that cloud-enabled machine learning (ML) detected 7.6 percent more instances of cardiovascular disease relative to clinician assessments. Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in Australia and New Zealand, with 60 percent of cardiovascular disease globally occurring within the Asia Pacific region.

Six common cloud use cases across Asia Pacific

Evolving cloud-based healthcare use cases across Asia Pacific countries cluster into six main categories, and the report provides examples for each category.

1. Data analytics and research platforms enable health organizations and researchers to process large volumes of data and derive insights more efficiently.
2. Interactive health platforms improve patient access to information about their health and enable them to manage aspects of it remotely, such as prescriptions.
3. Health databases aid access to large amounts of health data, often interoperable across a health system.
4. Remote monitoring tracks patients’ health data and predicts health outcomes in real time.
5. Response to major health events such as COVID-19 includes contact tracing and distribution of test results.
6. Telemedicine provides remote patient access through videoconferencing.

The call for more cloud investment

The report notes that the International Data Corporation (IDC) estimates that investment in cloud-based healthcare innovation is due to have grown by USD 1.6 billion over the decade to USD 2.5 billion by 2026.

This lags cloud investment in sectors such as financial services. Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand spend more than five times the next nearest countries in per capita terms on healthcare-related cloud investment.

Despite the growth, healthcare comprised approximately 2.9 percent of total spending on cloud technology in the region in 2022.

Boosting investment in cloud-based healthcare solutions starts with a clearer appreciation of the potential socio-economic benefits of being able to innovate with new services, to scale capabilities, and share knowledge widely. The Deloitte report lists socio-economic benefits as including increased national productivity and tax contributions as a result of happier, healthier nations—on top of a reduction in healthcare costs, which makes services more sustainable.

Recommendations in the report for governments

1. Develop a clear digital health strategy with funded initiatives supporting cloud deployment.
2. Build digital and cloud computing skills in the healthcare workforce.
3. Balance regulatory controls with support for innovation.

In Australia and New Zealand, active steps have been taken to transition core healthcare functions to the cloud through online portals. These provide easy access to health information—such as My Aged Care in Australia or Manage My Health in New Zealand. Meanwhile, telehealth consultations receive government funding in both countries.

With significant benefits on offer, now is the time for governments and healthcare providers across Asia Pacific to review what’s possible.

For the full Asia Pacific report and editions for nine countries, visit Benefits of cloud-enabled healthcare in Asia-Pacific edition, Japan (English), Japan (Japanese), South Korea (English), South Korea (Korean), Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, India, Indonesia, or ANZ.

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