3 Ways Telecommunications Can Digitally Transform Healthcare in ASEAN
As digital society becomes ever so prevalent and important in life, the potential for health care grows, as its horizon expands. With telecommunication comes accessibility to information and efficiency in its transfer. Both private and public entities throughout the world have been trying to incorporate it to healthcare in order to increase efficiency. In ASEAN today, telemedicine is most prevalent in private hospitals, where investments in technology to accommodate patients are much higher. Big hospitals such as Bumrungrad International Hospital in Bangkok, Thailand, Singapore National University Hospital, and University of Malaya Hospital in Malaysia have invested in the digital infrastructure that allows for telemedicine to be possible. As for the rest of ASEAN, there are still great strides to be made and no better time to consider the facets that will make international healthcare possible. Unlike before, information transfer needs not be done physically but rather digitally. Here are 3 possible steps of growth potential with regard to ASEAN healthcare and “telehealth”:
1. “Unmanned” health stations
The majority of ASEAN countries have a very limited amount of healthcare practitioners and personnel, with the majority of doctors preferring to be stationed in big cities. Whilst the distribution of general practitioners may be at least adequate or near-adequate in some of the region’s countries, that of specialists is definitely not. Currently, a patient with certain serious illnesses and diseases who is receiving government-funded health care must travel long distances to receive treatment.
For instance, glaucoma patients from Chantaburi in Thailand must travel long distances, spending hours on buses, just to come and see a specialized ophthalmologist at a public hospital such as Rajavithi hospital in Bangkok. Whilst at the hospital, patients wait hours before getting to see the doctor for more-often-than not less than three minutes. The interaction is usually limited to the doctor's observation via a slit lamp exam, where doctors simply look at the patient's eyes with a, simply put, complex magnifying glass. The doctor then proceeds to either prescribe medication or in less common circumstances, schedule a surgery.
This inefficiency puts a heavy cost burden on low-income families. Instead, a potential solution would involve adequately equipped health centers where a nurse or optometrist takes photos of the patient’s eyes and send it to bigger hospitals where doctors can assess it. For the majority of the cases where treatment is prescription for now, doctors can prescribe the proper medications, and local pharmacists would then provide the medicine. In all fairness, the so-called “unmanned health stations” would be better named “un-doctored” stations, as there need to be nurses or other skilled personnel including technicians present. Whilst distribution of less common drugs is a challenge, it is far better and more efficient to ship a parcel than have a person travel hours to receive treatment. With the establishment of these health stations, patients could more efficiently receive quality treatment whilst saving time and energy.
2. Adequately distributed network of infrastructure
As mentioned earlier, this is a huge step that would require a lot of investments as well as cooperation by all countries. Two forms of infrastructure must be established: physical and digital.
The physical infrastructure would have to include: central hospitals sparsely distributed throughout different regions of each country, and the aforementioned health centers more intensely distributed throughout the areas. Central hospitals will act as a hub of specialists as well as general practitioners, equipped with an adequate amount of operation theaters specific to different types and sizes of surgery. Doctors will primarily be diagnosing and treating patients online via data from health centers throughout, and performing surgeries on those that need to be referred in. Health centers need to be equipped with adequate technology to provide doctors with enough data and evidence to diagnose patients. There could perhaps be multiple levels of health centers, where ones with more technology are more sparsely dispersed, and ones with less technology deal primarily with general treatment.
The health centers are going to be useless without the digital infrastructure. Unlike its physical counterpart, this could perhaps be built upon already existing networks such as that of Google. It is important to note that the network must be trustworthy and impenetrable to hacking both in theory and practice. This is important due to practitioner-patient confidentiality regulations.
3. Telehealth monitoring
Once patients who have undergone surgery have passed the critical point, they will go home. The process of checking up will be the same as that of a typical appointment. Patients could go to local health centers where data and evidence can be collected then sent to doctors at central hospitals.
This system would certainly decrease overall cost in healthcare as well as increase efficiency and widen coverage of health services. It would also lend itself to cross-border cooperation. Currently, patients with enough money from countries with lower healthcare standards such as Laos or Myanmar often fly to Bangkok to get quality healthcare at private hospitals. However, patients who cannot afford that trip are often inadequately treated, and suffer as their diseases worsen over time. This system, if expanded in some form across national borders, would ensure that patients in that category can receive quality healthcare. The described system is, of course, an idea that needs work on many details, from finance to government regulation to the tradition of the medical profession that regards the personal interaction between doctor and patient in the same room as indispensable for a proper examination. . Regardless, it is an idea that needs exploring as it could make a contribution to solve one of the major issues that ASEAN citizens face.