Webinar, Panel
Hacking a Pandemic: Healthtech Amid COVID-19
Milken InstituteChristian Besler, Dr. Manuel Dayrit, Dr. Joseph Mocanu, Dr. Matthew Wang, Dr. Jeremy Lim, Cesar Purisima
- Milken Institute aims to convene a health tech roundtable in Manila by 2021, while digital transformation is projected to accelerate dramatically within the next few months, compressing a decade of progress.
- Telemedicine usage is anticipated to persist post-COVID-19, with younger patients favoring digital consultations for convenience and elderly patients preferring in-person encounters, though experienced doctors are expected to slowly adapt to telemedicine to serve more patients without travel.
- Contact tracing applications are predicted to evolve by linking with health records, population trends, and wearables to detect emerging health trends, while future sensor technology may integrate nine or more biomarkers into single home-use devices.
- Home-based testing capabilities are expected to expand to include blood, saliva, and urine tests capable of generating 20 to 30 different results from a single card, supporting evidence-based decision-making via AI to reduce variability.
- Medical education in the Philippines faces challenges due to the gap between current faculty training and rapid technological advances, with a digital divide expected to concentrate adaptation in urban areas while remote populations struggle.
- Telemedicine in rural Philippines is viewed as a vital advancement for connecting remote physicians to treatment centers, supported by expectations for government action to create adaptation platforms and train human resources.
- Telemedicine adoption is predicted to accelerate rapidly upon the introduction of insurance reimbursement, shifting from an out-of-pocket model, while AI engines will advance medicine through supervised learning and vast data specialization.
- Mobile hospital vehicles equipped with double-A hospital-grade equipment are expected to deploy to remote villages, and the WeDoctor platform will increasingly host free seminars and recorded practices by famous doctors.
- Government policies are anticipated to enable online social insurance payments for telemedicine during crises, such as lockdowns, while consumer demand is expected to drive healthcare providers to implement new models that prompt regulatory changes.
- Future integration of healthcare assets is expected to allow patients to move easily across systems, potentially bridging public and private sectors through government-led digital health integration in the Philippines.
- Modernization of the health system, field operations, and digital infrastructure is expected to follow a trajectory driven by consumers, legislators, and visionaries, building on national health record infrastructure established in well-handled countries.
- Technology for identifying patients for insurance via facial recognition or fingerprint is already available in China, and a Philippine mobile app to track population infections is expected within the next few months.
- Countries that managed COVID-19 effectively already possessed national health record infrastructure, whereas others lacking it may catalyze permanent changes post-crisis rather than building it during the emergency.
- The health system in the Philippines holds tremendous opportunities to advance, aiming to provide better, more affordable, and higher-quality healthcare to 100 million Filipinos.