Four emerging health ecosystem trends in Asia
What strategic considerations should shape entrants’ moves into Asia’s rapidly expanding digital health ecosphere?
Emerging health ecosystems already impact more than a billion lives across Asia. These ecosystems are designed to seamlessly deliver the right care in the right setting and time by integrating three critical components: first, a network of health service providers across care settings; second, a system of intelligence that harnesses behavioral, social, and health data to analyze patients’ needs and selects the appropriate provider; and lastly, a technology backbone that enables data and insights to flow between care providers.
Based on the latest research from Future of Asia, we currently see four health ecosystem archetypes emerging in the region, each with a different focus:
Broadening access to primary care. Singapore — an early adopter of many digital health technologies — is the home of MyDoc, represented in eight markets across Asia. MyDoc offers chronic and preventive medical care services on one fully integrated online-to-offline platform. It recently partnered with Prudential Thailand to provide its service on the insurer’s app. Users can now schedule video consultations with a licensed doctor, obtain electronic prescriptions and electronic medical certifications, as well as arrange delivery of their prescribed medication from the comfort of their home.
In India, Practo was one of the first platforms to connect hospital-based physicians to patients across the country via video- and phone-based consultations, then expanded into medicine delivery, electronic health records management for hospitals, and even medical insurance services. In Indonesia, Halodoc enables patients to have general practitioner teleconsults, pharmacy delivery, and home lab services across more than 50 cities, addressing lack of easy access to primary care outside of urban areas.
Improving health and wellness. Some public and private payers have begun using digital technologies to nudge consumers to monitor their health and lower the long-term cost of care. Since 2015 the Health Promotion Board (HPB) of Singapore has run its Healthy 365 program, which gamifies wellness by awarding redeemable Healthpoints based on daily step counts, healthy food purchases, health screenings, and more. In 2020, it expanded its program by partnering with Apple to launch LumiHealth, which layers in additional activity and wellness challenges for Apple Watch owners. Similarly, private payers such as AIA and Prudential (see above) have launched personalized wellness programs to engage policyholders and guide them to the appropriate health provider.
COVID-19 has been a stimulus for the uptake of wellness apps across Asia (particularly driven by contact tracing), although data security remains a concern for some. One example is Malaysia’s MySejahtera app, which lets users perform health self-assessments while allowing the Ministry of Health to monitor users’ health and expedite treatment to those in need.
Expediting access to acute care. An increasing number of hospitals are looking to establish digital “front doors” to engage with patients before and after their visit. Singapore has adopted this model across its public healthcare system, with its HealthHub app serving as a single comprehensive digital entry point for all citizens to book appointments, order medications, and access vaccination records, disease risk assessments, and other health content. Apollo Hospitals, one of the largest hospitals in India, also launched its Apollo 24/7 health ecosystem in February 2020 to provide teleconsultations and home delivery of medicines. This model has also scaled intensively in China, with close to 1,000 “internet hospitals” established by early 2021 and detailed guidelines on social insurance reimbursement of online activities published by more than 20 cities.
Managing and monitoring disease. Interest in digital chronic-disease management platforms is starting to emerge across Asia. Singapore’s Healint focuses on migraine sufferers and patients with various neurological conditions using machine learning, sensor technologies, and analytics. It also specializes in virtual clinical trials. The company says its Migraine Buddy app is the number-one migraine patient app in the world with over 2,700,000 people using it globally.
Depending on their size and level of ambition, potential players can consider becoming orchestrators or participants in the digital health ecosystem. However, there are lessons to be learned to capture these opportunities. Importantly, success relies on aligning multiple stakeholders (government, payers, providers, physicians, and patients) within health systems, and in-depth understanding of the specific pain points of each party (down to operational level) is vital.
Both healthcare incumbents and new entrants can start to reimagine what their future role in a health ecosystem could be by asking four important questions:
1. What is the source of advantage? Successful ecosystem players typically start with a control point in mind. For example, consumer technology typically relies on existing consumer platforms as an entry point to offer health-related services. Payers, meanwhile, use their large-scale distribution networks and access to patients’ claims data to shape service offerings, while providers leverage their trusted reputation in health and access to physicians and trusted reputation in health.
2. What strategic capabilities and partnerships should be developed? The ability to rapidly strike partnerships is a critical strategic muscle for ecosystem orchestrators as they expand beyond initial service offerings. For example, Halodoc harnesses GoJek’s broad transportation network for home delivery of medications across Indonesia — a service that would be too costly for it to develop on its own. China’s Tencent also partners with pharma or medtech companies to develop AI-based diagnostics or invests directly in healthtech startups.
3. What is the time horizon and risk appetite to invest? Health ecosystems require significant long-term investment to successfully create their partnership network and user base. Rather than seeking to turn an immediate profit, companies with ambitions to develop health ecosystems should look at growth metrics or core business synergies as leading indicators of platform success.
4. How will stakeholders interface with government healthcare priorities and regulators? Working closely with local governments to develop digital health solutions could accelerate adoption and value capture.
It is important to remember that a digital ecosystem does not imply a purely online approach; a successful model requires integration of both online and physical resources to build the care continuum and achieve the best outcomes. Though digital health is expected to scale even further in the years ahead, the design of each business model requires definition of at least three functions to ensure sustainable development: flow generation, transaction conversion, and profit creation.
