Asia is primed for healthcare change driven by shifting demographics, rising consumer expectations, technological innovations, and limited legacy health infrastructure, noted Zoom Video Communications (Zoom) head of Asia Pacific Ricky Kapur.
“Asia healthcare providers have an unprecedented opportunity to transform the region’s healthcare landscape,” he said on Wednesday in Zoom’s inaugural healthcare webinar in Asia: Driving the Future of Virtual Healthcare: One Platform for Care, Collaboration & Innovation.
Firstly, populations across the region are getting older and moving into rural areas. By 2025, 460 million individuals in Asia will be over the age of 65 years old, representing 10% of its population, Kapur said, quoting Asia Society’s ‘The future of population in Asia: Asia’s ageing population’ report.
“Rapid demographic change both increases potential demand for healthcare services, and at the same time decreases the available supply of workers to deliver care,” he highlighted.
Meanwhile, healthcare costs are rising faster than real wages, at a rate of 3.3 times in Australia and 7.8 times in Singapore, for instance. Consumers are frustrated with the current state of healthcare, most notably long wait times and high healthcare cost, Kapur noted.
Against this backdrop, Asia consumers are embracing the digital era. “While the rate of digital uptake varies by country, it is already changing the way healthcare is delivered across the region,” he said.
Quoting Bain’s 2019 Asia-Pacific Front Line of Health Survey, Kapur said nearly 50% of patients said they expect to use digital health tools in the next five years, and 91% of consumers said they will use digital health services if employers or insurance providers cover the cost.
In the webinar, Zoom spokespersons including Kapur and global healthcare lead Ron Emerson as well as industry leaders in the healthcare industry discussed pertinent topics around the future of virtual healthcare.
The speakers noted the unprecedented growth in telehealth over the past two years amid the pandemic, and shared how healthcare providers can elevate their patient experience with easy-to-deploy integrations.
Zoom stressed that digital-first healthcare does not mean digital only – it incorporates hybrid ways of providing care through new technologies such as Zoom when it is appropriate to do so.
Zoom looked at the top 100 of what it calls ‘Epic integrations’, and at the height of the Covid-19 outbreak, these healthcare systems did almost three million virtual consults in a month. It also takes pride that seven of the 10 top global pharmaceutical companies choose Zoom.
Embedding Zoom Rooms into hospitals allows for a flexible approach to healthcare, improving accessibility for quality care. Zoom’s hardware-agnostic nature gives healthcare providers the ability to create different spaces for multiple use cases with video. They are able to enhance experiences for patients and staff by integrating Zoom features and solutions across the various healthcare departments and functions.
Features like Smart Gallery, smart scheduling and workspace reservations allow healthcare staff to collaborate and connect seamlessly, with Zoom Whiteboard also being used to train nurses, doctors and staff, whether they are joining remotely or in person.
Zoom believes that healthcare organisations around the world, regardless of where they are located, have enough technology – the focus moving forward is to be able to integrate the right tools into the platforms that are used every day, and then virtualise these encounters to provide high-level clinical interactions.
“Zoom can empower healthcare providers to build a digital-first healthcare system where patients can have even more ways to connect to them, and have their healthcare managed remotely, saving time and lowering costs, all without compromising on the quality of care,” Kapur said.
