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We are not all equal in wealth, nor are we equal in health. Every day, 16,000 children across the world die before their fifth birthday. Children from the poorest 20 percent of households are twice as likely to die before this milestone than the richest, the World Health Organisation (WHO) says. Just like wealth, the answer for a more equitable distribution of health is more technology and innovation, but also out-of-the-box-thinking. Healthcare is ripe with opportunity for disruption.
Wealth = health
A child born today in Sierra Leone can expect to live on average 50 years, while in Japan life expectancy is 84 years. Wealth means health and the equation works both ways: it’s hard to focus on a job or to create a company when you suffer from malaria or your infant is severely ill with tuberculosis.
Foreign aid, NGOs, state intervention and large-scale vaccination programmes have helped create a more level playing field in health and contributed to significant increases in life expectancy, which rose by five years between 2010 and 2015, the fastest increase since the 1960s, according to the WHO.
However, there are still about a billion people on the planet for whom access to good healthcare is a long way off. That is despite the fact that health inequality has a huge cost on societies – in human lives but also in financial and development terms, since illness results in productivity losses and high treatment costs.
A raft of disruptive technologies
The good news is that the convergence of several ground-breaking technologies, such as wireless connectivity, the Internet of Things (IoT), robotics, artificial intelligence (AI) and Big Data, are about to change the paradigm of healthcare, giving every human being access to it.
Justin Fulcher is the chairman and CEO of Ring MD, a Singapore-based remote healthcare company offering an online platform connecting users with therapists, wellness experts, and doctors around the world and around the clock via the web and a mobile app. It’s also created smart devices allowing pre-emptive care and vigilant monitoring.
“We’re working to make important medical equipment more accessible. Consider the strides we’ve made in bringing eye care to less developed places. According to a 2016 study authored by the World Economic Forum, 2.5 billion people that need prescription glasses to see can’t get them. We've created an eye doctor’s clinic that fits into a backpack to solve this problem. It’s easy to use and can work anywhere. An individual is assessed and they are given prescription glasses on the spot, whether they’re in rural India or New York City,” he explains.
Ultimately, Fulcher believes that as advanced digital technology becomes better integrated into healthcare, patient data will become invaluable. “We hope to use machine learning, AI and complex algorithms to provide patients with personalised health recommendations. AI and chatbot technologies are being developed to help doctors improve the speed and accuracy of diagnoses. Again, with all of this our goal is to ensure that barriers to good health and wellness are destroyed,” he adds.
