Malaysia - Rising Affluence and Awareness Contribute Strongly to a Bright Outlook for the Asia-Pacific Hospital Market

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, June 5, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- The prevalence of chronic and infectious diseases, changing demographics, and increasing disposable incomes have created tremendous opportunities for the hospital sector in Asia-Pacific.

Rising patient awareness spurs demand for quality healthcare services, forcing hospitals to adopt innovative technology, thereby aiding market development.

New analysis from Frost & Sullivan (http://www.medtech.frost.com), Asia-Pacific Hospital Outlook 2013, finds that the market earned revenues of more than US$377.90 billion in 2012 and estimates this to reach US$1085.98 billion in 2017. The countries covered in the research are China, India, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia and Hong Kong.

Governments in Asia-Pacific remain the main financiers of healthcare, with more than 55 percent of the total healthcare expenditure in the region incurred by the public sector. However, inadequate budgets have led to resource constraints in terms of doctors, nurses, hospitals and hospital beds in public hospitals. The lack of resources to handle the growing number of patients decreases the quality of care in these choked facilities.

"Private hospitals, on the other hand, are growing by virtue of favourable government policies, which encourage investments in state hospitals and public-private partnerships," said Frost & Sullivan Healthcare Senior Industry Analyst Nitin Dixit. "Nevertheless, high costs in the sector may deter potential consumers even if the quality of care is good."

Another market challenge is the uneven distribution of healthcare facilities and resources in Asia-Pacific. Rural areas in most countries have poor access to healthcare. In addition, more than 90 percent of large, quality private hospitals in the region are located in Indonesia and Thailand alone.

Despite this, the private hospital segment is expected to see robust growth primarily due to an ageing, yet affluent population, as well as growing medical tourism, particularly in Thailand, Singapore, India and Malaysia. The acquisition of smaller hospitals by large hospital groups provides added economic impetus to the healthcare system in the region.

New hospital designs, fresh business models, integration of holistic healthcare, and strong focus on healthcare IT will be crucial for private and public hospitals in the region to increase their competitiveness.

Market players need to invest extensively in installing, maintaining, and upgrading hospital information systems to enhance operational efficiency, clinical outcomes, and profitability. Sustainable and innovative business models such as green buildings and day care centers will ensure market expansion.

"Electronic medical and electronic health records systems will be top priority in hospital budgets in the next five years," observed Dixit. "Smart hospitals are anticipated to evolve over the next decade in Asia-Pacific."

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Singapore - Rising patient demands and life expectancy in Asia Pacific continues to drive healthcare sector

Asia Pacific healthcare expenditure to see almost double digit growth for the next six years

SINGAPORE, Feb. 6, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- The Singapore healthcare expenditure market was worth US$ 11.7 billion in 2012 and will grow to US$ 22.3 billion by 2018, which represents a CAGR of 11.4% from 2012 to 2018.

The growth of the Singapore healthcare market will also set the increment in healthcare workforce such as doctors, nurses, dentists, pharmacists and allied health professionals by 50%, that is, 20,000 by 2020.

The Asia Pacific healthcare market was worth US$ 369.9 billion in 2012 and is expected to reach US$ 752 billion in 2018, growing at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 12.8% while global growth rates continue at less than 6% during the same period.

Rhenu Bhuller, Vice President, Healthcare, Asia Pacific, Frost & Sullivan said, "Healthcare expenditure continues to experience growth as rising patient demands for better healthcare will result in healthcare reforms in Asia Pacific. Increasing urbanization is accompanied with growing consumer awareness and an expanding middle class, progressively skewing population density. This all translates to an increased demand for improved healthcare services."

She continued, "The increasing life expectancy in the region will also result in more elderly requiring long-term care. Asia Pacific will consist of over 2.3 billion people above 65 years of age and the average percentage of people above 65 will rise from 9.8% in 2013 to 11% in 2018 across the region. 68.5% of people will be in the working age of 15-64 years."

Private Hospital Sector Set for Growth in APAC

About 180 million new hospital beds will be needed over the next decade to meet the rising healthcare demand in Asia Pacific; more than 40% of that is expected to come from the private sector. Favourable government policies, increasing disposable income and changing demographics will drive growth in private hospitals. Private hospital revenue in Asia Pacific is expected to grow at a CAGR of 17.1% from 2012 to 2018.

China leads the demand as currently only 6.8% of all beds are in private hospitals and the China government has plans to increase it to 20% by 2015 and it would create a need for about 400,000 new private hospital beds per year.

Healthcare IT Presents a Highly Competitive Market

APAC has traditionally been a laggard in implementing technology in healthcare and this trend will continue into 2013. The revenue forecast for Healthcare IT in Asia Pacific is looked to reach at a CAGR of 13.1% from 2012 to 2018. Large scale implementations will generate better returns on investment for both healthcare providers and technology vendors.

The most formidable challenge is around interoperability arising from the lack of uniform standards, protocols, data definitions and data sharing laws across APAC countries. Budget constraints also hamper adoption.

Growth Opportunities in Top 5 Sectors

-       Medical Tourism

Driven by rising affluence and increasing demand of quality healthcare, Medical Tourism will be one of the top growth sectors in Asia Pacific in the short to medium term.

-       Day Care Surgery / Healthcare Centre

Day Care Centre is a medical service entity which performs medical and surgical procedures on patients within a day. Day Care Centre is a lucrative business option which requires lesser investment and offers better profitability.

-       Specialty Hospitals

Due to increasing lifestyle diseases, such as diabetes and CHD, Asia will be a big market place for specialty hospitals.

-       Private Medical Insurance

Increasing cost of healthcare coupled with existing low penetration rates of public insurance will create a big market for private insurance companies.

-       Healthcare IT

In order to remain competitive by increasing operational efficiency, clinical outcomes and financial profitability, private and public hospitals will invest extensively in installing, maintaining and upgrading Healthcare IT.

Frost & Sullivan

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Australia - Malaria Parasite Is Driving Human Evolution In Asia-Pacific

A new study shows that the malaria species widespread in the Asia-Pacific region has been a key driver of human genome evolution.

Malaria is a parasitic disease with devastating effects, causing up to one million deaths annually worldwide. Approximately half the world’s population is at risk of malaria infection. The disease is a major cause of poverty and has been a barrier to economic development.

The most prevalent malaria species in the Asia-Pacific region is Plasmodium vivax, widely considered to be a ‘benign’ form of malaria.

In comparison, Plasmodium falciparum is the species that causes the most severe disease and deaths from malaria. For this reason, P. falciparum has been thought to be the most important driver of human genome evolution.

An international team of researchers now report in PLoS Medicine that the milder P. vivax species is also a significant cause of genetic evolution, which provides protection against malaria.

The team who made this discovery included scientists from the Papua New Guinea Institute of Medical Research and the University of Western Australia, and was led by Professor Ivo Mueller from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Australia.

Early on, the researchers observed that the incidence of a hereditary red blood cell disorder was unusually high in the Asia-Pacific region.

Southeast Asian ovalocytosis (SAO), indigenous to Malaysia and Papua New Guinea, is a condition caused by a genetic defect in a cell membrane protein that results in red blood cells being a different shape from normal.

Up to 35 percent of inhabitants along the coasts of Papua New Guinea carry this genetic defect. Because these are high malaria endemic areas, it is believed that SAO could be associated with improved survival against malaria.

“SAO occurs in approximately 10 to 15 percent of the population in parts of the South West Pacific and is caused by a hereditary mutation in a single copy of a gene that makes a red blood cell membrane protein. This is almost an absurdly high frequency when you consider that inheriting two copies of the mutation is invariably fatal, so we figured it must confer a strong advantage to the carriers,” said Mueller.

The researchers studied 1,975 children, from infants to 14 years of age, in the Madang area of Papua New Guinea. The incidence of infection by the malaria parasites P. vivax and P. falciparum was significantly reduced in SAO-positive children, while the risk of infection was reduced between 46 and 55 percent, depending on the age of the children.

“Humans and malaria parasites have been co-evolving for thousands of years,” Mueller said. “Malaria has been a major force in the evolution of the human genome, with gene mutations that provide humans with some protection against the disease being preserved through natural selection because they aid in survival.”

Controversially, this finding goes against the established theory that P. falciparum, responsible for the most lethal form of malaria, is the only malaria parasite that can drive genome evolution in humans.

“Our results suggest that P. vivax malaria, though until recently widely considered to be a ‘benign’ form of malaria, actually causes severe enough disease to provide evolutionary selection pressures in the Asia-Pacific,” explained Mueller.

Prof. Mueller expects these findings to impact malaria vaccine design and development.

“Studying the mechanisms that cause SAO-positive people to be protected against P. vivax malaria could help us to better understand the mechanics of infection and help us to identify better targets for a malaria vaccine,” he said.

The article can be found at: Rosanas-Urgell A et al. (2012) Reduced Risk of Plasmodium vivax Malaria in Papua New Guinean Children with Southeast Asian Ovalocytosis in Two Cohorts and a Case-Control Study.

Source: WEHI

David Tan | Health & Medicine

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Philippines - Asia-Pacific: Putting Science Into Policy

Asia-Pacific countries need an organized, concerted effort to strengthen scientific input into decision-making, urges Crispin Maslog of the Asian Institute of Journalism and Communication.

As governments seek to steer a course through the nuances of genetically modified crops, nuclear reactors, and environmental degradation, policy decisions are often made by bureaucrats with little background in science.

How to increase the likelihood that their decisions are evidence-based is a challenge for developed and developing countries alike – but none more so than the science-deprived countries of South-East Asia and the small island nations of the Pacific.

Not enough scientists

The science policy establishment is dominated by lawyers and politicians – competent people who, for the most part, have never been involved in science. As a result they have a limited ability to understand the science that underpins their policy decisions.

In 2006 I was involved in a campaign to get a scientist elected onto the Philippine Congress. We were defeated at the polls, partly because our candidate, an award-winning geneticist, lacked the political savvy to win voters. This is not unusual in the Asia–Pacific scene.

One problem is that we do not produce enough scientists. As the former president of Thailand’s National Science and Technology Development Agency, Sakarindr Bhumiratana, said, “Thais are better at producing artists and poets than scientists and researchers.” This can be said for most, if not all, of the countries in the region.

And increasing technical complexity, along with the convergence of multiple disciplines such as nanotechnology and biotechnology, make it harder for policymakers to fully understand scientific developments.

Growing interest

The good news is that many science and technology issues have moved to the forefront of policy debate and the front pages of press coverage. Yet awareness of the importance of science is still low among the general public.

We need to invest more in communicating about science. An educated public would force policymakers to try to understand the scientific basis for legislation affecting the environment, for example.

This creates a new imperative for scientists to engage in policy; not to make technical experts out of policymakers, but to give them the background information they need to make good decisions.

In recognition of this imperative the Inaugural Asia Pacific Science Policy Studies (SPS) Research Conference was held earlier this year (February 8-10, 2012) in Wellington, New Zealand, a country with strong ties to the Pacific nations.

The conference stimulated discussions between science policy researchers, government officials, industry and professional associations, as well as Māori scientists and those possessing indigenous knowledge.

We need to follow this up, perhaps by forming a network of interested stakeholders to lobby for scientists to have more involvement in government.

Strengthening influence

Good, old-fashioned lobbying is the most effective way of making a difference.

But most scientists, especially in Asia-Pacific countries, are preoccupied with developing their own research instead of considering its impact on society. It is time that national scientists’ organisations, such as the Philippines National Academy of Science and Technology, add lobbying to their agenda.

Scientists and the mass media must also engage more intensely in science communication to make science more accessible, understandable and usable not only to the public, but to policymakers too.

It is worth considering introducing a course and career option in science policy advocacy alongside our university science courses. Related to this would be science policy internships in government offices for graduate science students.

In Canada, the Canadian Policy Research Awards honour the contributions of the country’s top academics, journalists and institutions to the formulation of science policy.

And in the U.K. the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology employs scientists to advise members of parliament on science and technology related to policy issues.

These advisors give briefings and prepare reports – which are also made available to the public – and organize seminars to bring parliamentarians together with academics, the media, nongovernmental organizations, other interest groups and the public.

In the Philippines, lawmakers sometimes hold public hearings on key science issues that affect pending legislation, but they are few and far in between.

We must make more effort to strengthen scientific input into policymaking, to make it more consistent and better organized.

Source: Science and Development Network.

Crispin Maslog | Editorials

AsianScientist

Singapore - Asia-Pacific Is New Scientific Leader, Experts Say

Asia-Pacific is producing the latest developments in science, according to three science and academic leaders from the United States, Canada, and Singapore in the journal Science.

The most dramatic new developments in science are taking place among nations in the Asia-Pacific and the phenomenon is changing the dynamic of science around the globe, according to three science and academic leaders from the United States, Canada, and Singapore.

In an article published in the current issue of the journal Science, National University of Singapore President Chorh Chuan Tan, University of British Columbia President Stephen J. Toope, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Board Chair Nina V. Fedoroff cite a Royal Society report that shows the publications output of Chinese scientists is set to surpass that of U.S.-based scientists by 2013.

Meanwhile, major investments in discovery and innovation are building capacity in Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan.

“A concerted and immediate effort is required to enhance Asia-Pacific science collaboration,” the authors say.

The authors propose several strategies, including promoting researcher-to-researcher linkages, sharing curricula, creating incentives for university researchers to engage in productive international collaborations, building “innovation ecosystems,” and enabling greater talent mobility among graduate students, post-doctoral fellows and established researchers.

More flexible visa arrangements, similar to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation business travel card which allows for pre-cleared multiple entry for frequent business travelers within the APEC region, would go a long way to facilitating mobility among researchers in the region, they add.

Regional sharing of information is also critical to prevent duplication of effort and expertise, the authors say.

“One of the least efficient aspects of global university culture is the constant reinvention of curriculum, and international collaboration can help address this issue, as well as bringing together complimentary expertise to achieve higher-impact science research,” said Toope.

Asian Scientist Newsroom

Source: Science Magazine