Technology has improved many products and services over the past decade, yet health care remains a stubbornly analog industry.
This must change. The digitisation of health services through new information technologies-broadly known as "eHealth"-has the potential to dramatically improve the health-care experience for patients. These programmes can also deliver benefits to providers and payers in the form of greater efficiency and better access to patient information.
In Canada, for example, a national Electronic HealthCare Program is projected to offer gross savings of more than (QR291.2 billion) $80 billion over a 20-year period. In Saudi Arabia, the national Electronic Health Record could save the country in excess of (QR109 billion) $30 billion, with health-care payers and providers benefitting most. While these programmes typically require a substantial up-front investment, they deliver cost advantages that grow over the long term, as more people join the system.
In Qatar, eHealth features high on the state's leadership agenda. The National Health Strategy (2011-2016) and the National ICT Plan 2015 both underscore eHealth as a key aspect of nurturing a healthy population, both physically and mentally. As a result, the Supreme Council of Health has outlined Qatar's national eHealth programme, focusing on health-care policy, a national health card, data warehousing and analytical services, a data center, a shared imaging strategy, and information systems that link hospitals and clinics. Efforts are already underway to build a unified system to maintain health records, along with train medical staff on its use, integrating hospitals into the system, and making participation a formal requirement for all new hospitals.
Despite this progress, eHealth programmes are complex and require a number of different capabilities, and many GCC governments do not yet have the expertise to implement them and capture all the benefits. These ventures call for extensive technological expertise and capabilities in highly specialised fields as coding, standards, and system integration and interoperability. The implementation process lasts for years and requires substantial investment from governments. Canada launched its national initiative in 2001 and implementation continues today. Germany's Health Electronic Card initiative began in 2005 and is still unfinished, although the programme's focus has changed. These less-than-ideal outcomes are partly the result of governments being ill-suited to implement such large-scale, technically challenging programmes.
Private-sector players, particularly telecom companies, can help. These companies are uniquely positioned to strategically partner with government health authorities in order to develop national eHealth programs. Telecoms have sufficient resources to make large scale national investments and possess a deep understanding of both public- and private-sector operations. They have a proven track record in designing, deploying, and operating large scale ICT infrastructure, and in providing end-to-end programme management and handling customer care. They can leverage their extensive existing large-scale national connectivity infrastructure. And they have the technical, financial, and human-capital capabilities needed to support governments in national scale digitisation initiatives.
One form of collaboration is the public-private partnership (PPP), which lets governments retain control of the regulatory responsibilities while off-loading the financial and operational risks of building and maintaining the necessary systems to private-sector players. PPPs are frequently used in large-scale infrastructure projects, though they have been increasingly applied to healthcare as well. The United Kingdom, Portugal, and Greece all used PPPs to create national health-care programmes.
Collaborative efforts needed
And as the world shifts to digital technology, telecoms are increasing their focus on health-related PPPs as well. In Italy's Lombardy region, for example, the government entered into a public-private partnership with telecom operators and other private-sectors players in order to launch a national health and social services electronic card. In the Middle East, Etisalat signed a strategic memorandum of understanding with the Health Authority Abu Dhabi (HAAD) to jointly develop innovative eHealth services.
While this partnership offers clear benefits for governments, the eHealth opportunity makes sense for telecom operators as well, given the current challenges in their market. Legacy phone services are being steadily commoditised, with eroding profit margins. Digitisation programmes such as eHealth now represent the next big wave for growth-a way for telecoms a new way to leverage their existing infrastructure and capabilities.
In addition to immediate revenue gains, eHealth ventures create several other benefits for telecoms. For example, they generate captive demand for their broadband infrastructure investments, in the form of a national customer base that will last for years, potentially decades. These initiatives also give telecoms the inside track on developing other digitisation opportunities for the public sector in their local market or abroad (such as eGovernment, likely to be a growth area in the Middle East over the coming years). And these programmes offer telecoms a way to capture and retain share in the growing IT services market.
As with any collaboration, success will hinge on both entities getting what they want from the partnership. For the government, this means improved health care and welfare for its citizens, along with shared risks in implementation. For the telecommunications operators, success will equal a profitable return on the company's investment.
In summary, the future of eHealth is collaborative. These programmes offer substantial benefits for all stakeholders of the health-care ecosystem-specifically patients, providers, and payers. The significant and long-term investments at stake, as well as the required level of technical expertise, mean that governments will increasingly need to partner with the private sector to make their eHealth ambitions a reality. For telecom operators, this is a genuine opportunity to apply their capabilities to a new market.
By Bahjat El-Darwiche, Partner, Jad Bitar, Principal and Dr. Nikhil Idnani, Senior Associate with Booz & Company
© Qatar Today 2012
