Nowadays, a lot of Vietnamese companies are concentrating on the technologies that would lead to better healthcare. Undoubtedly, some of this is the result of COVID-19’s emphasis on the shortcomings in Vietnam’s healthcare system and on global innovation in the provision of high-quality healthcare.
Opportunities For Healthtech In Vietnam
In 2019, before the Covid-19 pandemic, Galen Growth’s year-end annual report showed that total funding for health technology in the Asia-Pacific region had increased to 5 billion USD including 340 contracts. At the top are India (32%), China (22%), Singapore (11%), Japan (8%) and Australia (8%). Indonesia holds 5% market share and Malaysia, Philippines and Vietnam have less than 2% market share. However, the number of startups in medical technology in Vietnam is increasing and 7 million USD has been invested during this period.
The past two years, the raging of the coronavirus has re-established trends in medical examination and treatment for people and created conditions for companies specializing in medical technology in Southeast Asia and around the world to launch. They will bring to market new technologies which make it easier for doctors to connect with patients, and more platforms that offer convenient medicine delivery without face-to-face contact.
According to the latest survey by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the level of spending of people in Southeast Asia on health care has increased over the years. Over the next five years, ASEAN countries including Vietnam, Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesia are likely to increase their total spending to nearly $800 billion.
Spending on healthcare technology in the ASEAN region has surpassed 115 billion USD in 2020. But in Vietnam today, the new technologies invested in the past years are mainly in system management. In-depth investment in procurement of modern medical equipment is still the initial steps. One of the difficulties that makes the development of medical technology difficult is because this field is very diverse in terms of operating forms, there are many participants, many types of techniques, and a large number of patients.
To participate in health technology projects requires knowledge of clinical medicine, medical organization, medical engineering and information technology. So in Vietnam, there are only a few software companies established by doctors that are on the right track, most of which are software companies without medical knowledge. These IT companies view medical data management programming as if they were a business manager, so during the Covid-19 pandemic, there was a situation of too many applications but in the end we did not have much software that met the requirements. The IVIE app from ISOFH is one of the apps that meet the standards.
Current Situation of Healthtech in Vietnam
When it comes to medical technology, Vietnam, like other countries, divides into two types of technology: One is techniques applied to medical equipment and the other is medical data management information technology. International hospitals have been equipped with modern testing machines that can give hundreds of biochemical, hematological, and immunological parameters from a small blood sample in 7 minutes. Laser myopia surgery technology does not touch the cutlery of the body, but the efficiency is very high. Thanks to the technology of laparoscopic surgery and robotic surgery, the dissection of the patient’s body is more accurate, the time is shortened, there is less infection, and there are fewer complications after surgery.
Currently, private medical facilities and, recently, state-owned medical facilities at the provincial and city levels are all purchasing a lot of new high-end imaging and testing equipment to serve medical examinations. Automated testing systems, advanced imaging equipment, and surgical robots imported from abroad have helped Vietnam’s healthcare develop significantly.
However, with the majority of public hospitals not yet given the financial autonomy to invest in purchasing new technical equipment, the bidding procedure takes a long time, while the equipment life cycle is quite short, and the equipment is quite expensive. Therefore, investing in high-tech machinery can be a high risk, and public hospitals tend to prefer cooperation with partners rather than in-depth investment.
For medical data management information technology, most of them are still focusing on the function of calculating hospital fees, but have not yet created an electronic medical record set. In modern health today, Electronic Health Records are a valuable treasure not only for people’s health but also for medical research. That’s why IVIRSE steps in and solves the problem with the help of blockchain technology. IVIRSE provides DataHub for patients to store and share Electronic Health Records safely and easily. The key benefit of Electronic Health Records is a comprehensive single source of truth of a patient’s medical records, creating a better experience for patients and medical facilities.
Digitizing medical records, and storing and exploiting patient record information quickly, accurately, and efficiently are criteria for evaluating hospitals. All specialized departments in the hospital must digitize and transfer information continuously to each other, even connecting with medical facilities in the same system. This saves papers, and time and gives absolutely accurate results.
Summary
Trends in Southeast Asia and the continent, in the field of HealthTech, the order of priority for development is medical data management (electronic health records) followed by diagnosis (medical examination), trading platform (health products), health (lifestyle), management solutions (health monitoring), and finally scientific research. Vietnamese startups in the medical technology field must also follow this direction to seize the golden opportunity.
References
Galen Growth (2019). Retrieved November 04, 2022 from
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