Are you happy with the cost & quality of healthcare?

The adage, “What goes up, must come down,” isn’t likely to apply to the current Global Healthcare systems. With ever increasing Global Healthcare Costs, it is becoming even more important to have a renewed focus on Preventive & Predictive Health Care by smart use of technology, system integration and patient centric tools. This paper tries to find a solution by using a live case of one of the close family member. Aging and growing populations, greater prevalence of chronic diseases, exponential advances in innovative, but costly, digital technologies—these and other developments continue to increase health care demand and expenditures.

 

Preface

Vijay underwent an ankle ‘arthrodesis’ surgery (also commonly known as ‘ankle fusion’) about 8 weeks back, and he was told it’s not before another 4 weeks that he can start walking independently!

Vijay started feeling a little pain in his left ankle about 5 years ago. He thought it may be a sprain from his tennis or work-outs and would settle down on its own. About two years’ from now, he was gradually developing annoying pain his lower back and increased pain in his ankle every time he would go for a basketball or football game with his friends!

While his ankle pain was tolerable, he started having trouble sleeping due to his back pain. Eventually, we ended up seeing a doctor (a year ago) who suggested that it could be because of sprain in some nerves and would be fine with some medication. However, things did not improve over the next 3 months and he referred us to an Orthopedic. We had an X-Ray & an MRI done and the doctor suggested that we would either have to replace the ankle or go for an ankle-fusion surgery; however he could carry on as long as the pain was bearable!

We consulted a couple of more doctors and did our own research on the Internet and decided to postpone the surgery primarily due to the fear of losing mobility for the rest of the life! So, Vijay continued with his regular medication and tied a bandage around his ankle throughout the day with the hope that it would heal on its own! However, we noticed a bulge on his anklebone in with increased pain and realized that the surgery is now imminent!

Now that the surgery is done and he is completely cured; we wonder if we could prevent a major surgery through proactive diagnostics, simplify the experience during hospitalization and a have a more friendly post-surgery care at home rather than spending 4-6 hours on the road for a review every week at the hospital! Can we actually re-invent the healthcare eco-system that delivers personalized care at a lower cost and better outcome?

 

Challenges

 While healthcare has become more institutionalized by the emergence of sophisticated hospitals, pharmaceutical & medical tech companies and insurance service providers; it’s difficult to agree whether the patient actually gets personalized care at affordable costs and can focus on prevention of diseases rather than just curing them!

Rising healthcare costs: Global healthcare spending (US$ 8.6 trillion in 2019) is estimated to rise at more than 5% annually over the next decade, compared to 4.5% growth in GDP making healthcare more expensive in the years to come. There is a vast gap in Per Capita spend on Healthcare between Developed countries (US: $ 11,674) and developing countries (Pakistan: $ 54). The developed countries spend 12% of their GDP on healthcare, twice as much compared to emerging market economies that spend 6% of the GDP. It is interesting to see that the higher spent in developed countries is around improving longevity and old-age care (24% population is over 64 years); where as in developing countries it is more around basic health services and treatment of diseases (only 9% over 64 years).

Apart from addressing rising costs and focusing on prevention; the healthcare industry also needs to address a number of issues like optimizing care as per demographics, making healthcare accessible to rural/needy population, adopting standardized best-in-class practices, leveraging analytics for prevention /diagnostics, reducing wastage & integrating co-ordination among medical practice areas to eliminate fragmentation and ensure holistic care for the patient. It also needs to enable better transparency & collaboration by opening up individual’s health records to other care providers, before and after the treatment.

 Opportunities

 While there are numerous challenges, there are also significant technological advancements that can be leveraged to shift the focus of the current ‘reactive’ healthcare system to a more ‘preventive’ and ‘patient-centric’ well-being.

Can we re-invent the healthcare ecosystem by leveraging the emerging technologies – mobile phones (apps), cloud platforms, wearable devices (IOT), social networks and cognitive analytics – especially for people who do not have access to information, doctors & hospitals and cannot afford the high costs involved in dealing with either unplanned exigencies or chronic health conditions!

Solution

 

Ufinity tries to address some of these concerns by using a Patient Centric Preventive and Predictive Engagement Model. The system uses a smart phone based network [Both iOS and Android] around individuals/patients by integrating doctors from connected practice areas, hospitals, pharmacists, home-care providers, family members and any other third-party that can engage at any point in time, from anywhere; without having to physically get together (except for surgeries/exigencies that call for hospital infrastructure).

Ufinity helps taking the Healthcare to next level by using a standardized, easy-to-use HIPPA / HL7 compliant infrastructure accessible to each and every individual; to plan for better health as well as maintain health history information (medical records) that will become a data driven foundation for preventive diagnosis and timely intervention. This will not only reduce costs drastically by eliminating all ‘non-value-adding-intermediaries’ in the healthcare ecosystem (better aggregation of supply and demand over a much larger population); but also will deliver better outcome to the patient by enabling transparent, analytics driven collaboration between all relevant stakeholders.