THE PERSONALISED HEALTHCARE FUTURE
As they start to chart a postCovid future, healthcare systems in Asia Pacific are under pressure to do more to achieve longterm resilience to better serve their growing and ageing populations.
It’s clear that a one-size-fits-all approach is no longer enough, but the good news is that technological and treatment advances are making a new era of personalised healthcare more possible.
According to the Asia Pacific Personalised Health Index, released recently by The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), the readiness of countries across the region for personalised healthcare varies significantly. The greatest strengths in the region are in health information, helped by a robust and growing digital infrastructure.
On the other hand, there are stark contrasts in policy and planning for personalised healthcare, indicating differences in regulatory and innovative capacity and potential for implementation, the survey’s authors said.
Access to and use of personalised technologies and health services also varies significantly across the region. These disparities reflect a variety of factors, from differing national priorities, healthcare financing models and levels of healthcare coverage to social and environmental conditions.
The index measures performance based on 27 different indicators of personalised health across four main categories known as Vital Signs: policy context, health information, personalised technologies, and health services. It is drawn from data that is publicly available, supplemented with input from public health authorities and validated by a panel of healthcare experts.
The health systems covered are in Australia, China, Japan, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and New Zealand.
Initiated by the FutureProofing Healthcare Initiative, with assistance from the Switzerland-based pharmaceutical group Roche, the index is intended to promote better understanding of local, national and regional strengths and needs, leading to better policies to build resilience in health systems.
Singapore performed the best of all the countries and territories measured. It was singled out for its combination of high digital maturity, comprehensive national strategies, a strong infrastructure and expansive innovation capacity, leading to top scores in both the health information and personalised technologies categories.
Taiwan, Japan and Australia also performed well in overall readiness. However, even higher-performing countries have numerous areas of opportunity for improvement. Challenges related to urban-rural disparities and building digital infrastructure affect lower-scoring countries, several of which are at the very early stages of personalised healthcare.
Thailand, meanwhile, is in the process of formulating and implementing plans to enable personalised healthcare. The country has strong data collection capabilities that can support limited aspects of personalised care, the survey said.
Strengthening the digital infrastructure, increasing investment in research and development, further streamlining regulatory processes, improving access to digital health services and technologies and building capacity in the healthcare workforce are potential focus areas for Thailand, the survey’s authors said.
In addition, there is a need for an emphasis on health equity to address issues of access and quality in Thailand as it makes its transition to personalised healthcare.