The FutureProofing Healthcare initiative, led by a panel of 15 healthcare experts across the Asia-Pacific region (APAC), launched the Asia-Pacific Personalised Health Index last month.
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| Lim discussing the new index at a panel session. |
This first-of-its-kind, data-driven policy tool measures the readiness of 11 health systems across the region (Australia, mainland China, Japan, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, and New Zealand) to adopt personalised healthcare – enabling the right care to be tailored to the right person at the right time.
Personalised healthcare can improve health system efficiencies by helping decision-makers prioritise efforts and resources, and initiate policies and frameworks that support healthcare innovation. An ideal personalised healthcare system is one that leverages data, analytics and technology to generate meaningful insights, inform decision-making, and drive innovation that supports both individual and population health and empowers patients to manage their own health.
“While progress towards personalised healthcare is varied, the index shows that the APAC region is making strong strides in the right direction – and outlines a clear path for countries to accelerate this transformation. It is encouraging to see many countries already putting in place strategies, policies, and enablers to drive more personalised care, such as electronic health records, health data registries and artificial intelligence. Roche is committed to working closely with policymakers and other partners to help build the infrastructure essential to realizing sustainable, personalised healthcare ecosystems.”
The findings indicate that Singapore performed highest overall of the geographies measured due to a combination of high levels of digital maturity, comprehensive national strategies, a strong digital infrastructure and expansive innovation capacities leading to top scores in both the Health Information and Personalised Technologies categories. Taiwan (2nd), Japan (3rd) and Australia (4th) also performed well in overall readiness.
However, the index also revealed that even higher-performing countries have room for improvement. Challenges around urban-rural disparities and building digital infrastructure impact lower-scoring territories, several of which are at the very early stages of personalised healthcare. Performance in the index varied most on the Policy Context measure, owing to factors like limitations on access to data for health research and a lack of capacity to deliver personalised health-related services in the workforce.
The index also revealed the lowest average performance for countries is on Personalised Technologies (measuring use of artificial intelligence (AI) in health and uptake of wearable health technologies etc.), indicating an opportunity to improve.
“Personalised healthcare has the potential to improve the lives of millions of people across Asia-Pacific. We have already seen countries racing to adopt policies that facilitate digital health solutions like telemedicine during the current pandemic. But it is clear that more work is needed across the region to realise these benefits,” said Jeremy Lim, Director of Global Health and Associate Professor in the Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health at the National University of Singapore, one of the public health experts involved in the development of the index.
“The Personalised Health Index builds a clearer picture of the current readiness of health systems, and enables countries to build on their strengths, identify key areas of opportunity for improvement and identify best practice from other countries on individual measures. It helps jumpstart conversations about what action is needed today to shape resilient, personalised and sustainable health systems that work better for future generations.”
“The launch of the Personalised Healthcare Index is an important step in our efforts to enable policymakers in building health systems that provide better outcomes for all. Roche is excited to support the development of this unique policy tool, which leverages publicly available data to provide a holistic view of personalised health in our region," said Rachel Frizberg, Area Head Asia-Pacific at Roche Pharmaceuticals.
Although there are significant disparities between countries measured, the results also show that the transition towards personalised healthcare is underway and gaining momentum across most of the region.
The index and FutureProofing Healthcare initiative, supported by Roche, aim to help stakeholders across health ecosystems understand local, national, and regional strengths and needs, equip country leaders to embrace emerging changes in healthcare, and enable data-driven decision-making that can build future health systems that are fit-for-purpose. The Personalised Health Index measures performance against 27 different indicators of personalised health across four categories called 'vital signs': policy context, health information, personalised technologies, and health services.
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The index findings and policy recommendations have been published in a white paper, Getting to Personalised Healthcare in APAC, coordinated by the Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies. View the results of the Personalised Health Index and read the white paper.
