The recent covid pandemic has had a strong impact on people’s daily living habits. Nowadays, the habit of wearing a mask when going out has become common in most parts of the world, which was previously only available in smoky and hot countries in Southeast Asia. Along with the increasing digitization trend in society, people increasingly want more convenience, faster and better quality in taking care of their own health. The following article will further clarify the highlights and growth potential of the healthcare market in Asia.
Healthcare Market Overview in Asia
According to a report by Asia Pacific’s healthcare information technology data research, demand in the healthcare market in Asia experienced strong growth as total revenue increased from $12.2 billion in 2019 to $14.9 billion in 2022, partly due to the inevitable fear as a consequence of the pandemic. Compound average growth of 7%, thanks to the development of medical software and applications. Among the groups of countries with the highest growth rates in Asia, China rises up as the leader in this market, followed by Singapore and Australia.
In addition, there is a clear correlation between growth in GDP per capita and people’s spending on health care services. Because as people become more wealthy in terms of money, they tend to spend much more to improve their quality of life, and not hesitate to invest in the best health care programs they could find with the most convenience in the market. This also attracts great interest from investment funds to pour capital into potential healthcare projects, especially those with high digital technology applications. It is best demonstrated by the 38% compound annual growth rate from 2015 to 2020, coming from private equities and large hedge funds. In particular, in 2020 alone, Asia recorded 44% of investments from these funds in digital health — with a whopping from $6 billion to $14 billion
The healthcare market in Vietnam
Vietnam is also not out of the inevitable trend of the world. In Vietnam, the healthcare market is still new, not so comprehensive and professional yet, especially in fields such as telemedicine, pharmacy, insurance, medical services, etc. In which, 2021, the whole country recorded only 5.92% of GDP for healthcare, along with 6.93% for net medical trend cost rates. This shows that if properly invested, there will be a lot of market share in that large market for healthcare projects to thrive in the future.
Opportunities and challenges
Opportunities
As mentioned above, as a developing country, Vietnam is a fertile land with many opportunities to attract large domestic and foreign investments. In 2017, about 7.5% of total GDP, or $16.1 billion, was spent on healthcare services (as reported by Business Monitor International (BMI)). This figure in 2021 is $22.7 billion, which equates to a compound annual growth rate of about 12.5% from 2017 to 2021.
There are many problems in the medical industry for potential startups to take advantage of their ideas. For example, more than 80% of Vietnamese people have no experience in choosing a quality examination facility for themselves and their families, leading to costly time and money when having to visit many hospitals just to get the correct diagnosis. In addition, medical facilities in Vietnam are also not equipped with the best data management equipment, so the medical staff also have to manually perform most of the cumbersome procedures, creating inconvenience and slowness in the medical examination process. These issues are also opportunities that startups can take advantage of to call for investment capital, thereby contributing to improving the quality of life for both residents and service providers.
Challenges
Every good opportunity always comes with the necessary challenges to be overcome. The first is from people’s daily habits. Digitizing hospitals can be a big step forward for the healthcare industry, but it won’t mean much without changing the traditional habits of most Vietnamese. In addition, businesses providing digital healthcare services must also have a certain reputation in the market to attract a large user base and also contract with the largest hospitals and clinics in the whole country.
Plus, startups also face great competition from domestic and foreign businesses with the same idea, places with much larger investment capital. Only projects that really stand out with their impressive and practical solutions can become the pioneers of this trend. For example, the IVIRSE project has used blockchain technology to create a universe in which patients are empowered to completely control their healthcare records, all the health data will be treated like a real asset.
Readers can see more information about the project here: https://ivirse.com/
Summary
In this digital technology race, the winner is the one who comes up with the best digital transformation solution for the healthcare service market, as well as the fastest and most accurate. The ever increasing demand for smart medical models will also contribute to the creation of a future healthcare ecosystem where smart hospitals, smart health institutes and medical management centers Smart economies co-exist and reciprocate in a vast digital universe of the Metaverse.
For more information, please contact the website: https://ivirse.com
