Despite being home to 60 per cent of the global population, Asia accounts for only 22 per cent of global health care spending – opening an opportunity for innovation and technology to bridge the gap differently from the manner of “legacy” infrastructure, points out a recent Boston Consulting Group (BCG) report.

Pointing out the constrained resources of hospital beds, specialist doctors etc, Priyanka Aggarwal, Managing Director and Senior Partner at BCG, said, there is opportunity for new infrastructure to come up, without replicating the legacy infrastructure. This infrastructure will need to be in tune with - changing demographics (including an ageing population); how patients consume healthcare, and at a cost “which is vastly different from how developed nations built their healthcare infrastructure,” Aggarwal, co-author on the “The Unmissable Asia Healthcare Opportunity” report told businessline.

The innovation could be in terms of decentralised, distributed, care, specialised care, value-based care and flexible insurance products, she said, citing “remote ICUs” and enabling nurses with technology, for example, as viable models.

Smruthi Suryaprakash, Partner at BCG, added that a similar innovative and tech-enabled approach can help the region leap-frog in the drug discovery segment, as well. Contract development and manufacturing organisations (CDMO) in the region would also benefit from scaling-up globally and with more complex products, she pointed out.

Outlining the heterogenous Asian market, the report pointed to the different healthcare spends of countries. “For instance, Indonesia spends only 3.7 per cent of its GDP on HC (healthcare) compared to more developed markets like Singapore at 5.5 per cent. Another metric that proves this disparity is HC spending per capita, with countries like India spending only $74 per capita, falling significantly behind nations such as Thailand and Malaysia, spending $364 and $487 per capita respectively,” the report said.

Despite the fluid geo-political situation, the report said, Asia was on track to get to $5 trillion by 2030, driving 40 per cent of the global sector growth. And this would be buoyed by “rapid demographic shifts, investment influxes, and ground-breaking technology applications,” it added. Further, the report pointed out, healthcare services were projected to grow from the current $1.0-1.5 trillion to $2.0-2.5 trillion by 2028. The pharmaceutical and medtech sectors were expected to see growth of 9 per cent and 8 per cent, respectively, over five years, it added.

Published on January 27, 2025