Global healthcare needs a digital upheaval, but how?

The level of face-to-face provisioning of medical services was at 99%, but when the current health pandemic hit, within a few short weeks 90% were remotely delivered. “We also saw a breaking down of traditional silos and a new sense of solidarity,” said Joann O’Brien, Vice President – Digital Ecosystems, TM Forum in a recent webinar which discussed how the world can leverage ICT to transform global healthcare. “Localized instances of different types of physicians and medical providers coming together with the government and the ICT community to try and solve the particular problems of their particular country.” But was it enough? And what more needs to be done?

There has been “no coherent response to this [Covid-19] crisis” asserted Denis Gilhooly, CEO, Global He@lth 2030 Task Force, “We haven't created the ecosystem, or brought in all of the major players that are relevant to define a suitable way forward.” The good news, he added, is that the ecosystem is now on everyone's lips.

The webinar was not solely focused on the current health pandemic, although we can acknowledge it is a key catalyst for some kind of reform, or as O’Brien put it, this is the opportunity to “create accelerated change for the betterment of citizens but also for governments to create a win win scenario for all those in the ecosystem.”

“I think there's a huge amount of goodwill and people who really want to make sure to help everybody affected by poor quality health services,” said O’Brien, “So, if we could actually channel that energy efficiently and structurally we could make a difference.” The question she posed to Gilhooly and Mark Newman, Chief Analyst, TM Forum is: What steps can be taken to make this difference? Both from a telecoms/IT perspective, and a holistic policy point of view.

In terms of the ICT perspective, Newman opined that surely this was a chance for different players in the supply chain/value chain to collaborate: “It would seem to me that in terms of how the ICT industry can be proactive, you would need to bring together those key power groups; those being the telecoms operators, the hyperscalers. And then [find] some way of bringing together other key technology hardware/software providers. And, at the very least, get them starting to talk.”

He added: “We do hear every so often that one of the big internet companies [have] launched initiatives in this area, but they don't seem to go very far. The heads of those organizations collaborating on what can be done in a post-Covid world would be very useful, and it may end up that the conclusion is not specifically [focusing] around healthcare, and more on the enablement of payment systems, for example.”

Gilhooly was in full agreement on the necessity for cross-industry collaboration, stating that while we won't even be talking about digital health in 10 years, and that it'll just be part of the broader digital economy and society, the next five years are crucial to getting us to that stage: “We need to get people around the table to sit down and come up with a standardized and interoperable framework for economies of scale. Because the problem in this sector up until now has been the fact that nothing will go to scale, that carriers come in and carriers go out because they can't see the model moving forward and they have not been encouraged by government.” He added: “[There’s a model] in the Caribbean where ministries of health sit down with the mobile operators, and with the banks and the insurance companies, that's the way forward; a multi stakeholder ecosystem for digital, which goes way beyond health, and embraces education and social empowerment.”

The webinar was sponsored by GIO, Global Industry Organisations, www.GIO.zone. Joann O’Brien leads the GIO Digital Health Initiative where the organisations are scoping a future ongoing initiative to support Global Digital Health Transformation GIO aims to seek to support the work lead by Gilhooly as CEO of the Global He@lth 2030 Task Force, in helping to bring the ecosystems together and helping to define standards to support this initiative on a global scale. Further definition will be scoped in the coming weeks with a research report due to be published in late September. The full webinar recording is now available on demand. Watch it now for a more complete in depth look at the digital needs from a healthcare perspective and how telecoms operators can contribute to this digitalization.