HBI attended the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) conference in Helsinki this week, alongside hundreds of health tech innovators and policymakers. Here are five things we learned.
A recent study in the Lancet showed that it was more dangerous to have access to poor quality health care than to have no access to health care. That is particularly true in Emerging Markets where quality varies dramatically. Julia Khalimova, Healthcare Quality and Patient Safety Specialist at IFC, the arm of the World Bank that invests in the private sectors of emerging markets, has been studying the field for ten years and IFC has recently launched a tool to enable operators to measure and improve. We talk to her about the problem. What progress has been made? And what is the best solution?
“If you build it, they will come”: This appears to be the mantra of some of the firms vying for business from public payors, but is it always a sensible approach?
The only way that digital care can be financially sustainable for both payors and operators is if it can scale. But recent debates in the UK and Sweden show that the public payor - the main mechanism that enables scale - is not yet equipped with the right mechanism to fund it.
"Health care services is a dirty enough business in Europe without us seeking more risk in Emerging Markets" was how a big private equity investor summed up his sentiment.
As Diaverum, one of the big five global dialysis operators, gears up for a $1bn-plus sale in 2019, what is the future of the only health care service which is truly internationalised?
A decade ago value health was flying high. Launched by Harvard guru Michael Porter in 2006 the idea was enthusiastically espoused by Barak Obama and central to Obamacare. Then along came Trump. Meanwhile, the fiendish complexity of health care has stymied efforts. So where is it now? ICHOM 2019 in Rotterdam with 1,250 delegates was a great place to find out.
Here are 10 more things that piqued our interest at HBI 2019, where sector stakeholders from payors to investors come together to grapple with the biggest and most interesting issues of the year.
When it comes to competition between the public sector and private operators in healthcare, the playing field is seldom even. Interestingly, however, the roles of David and Goliath in this particular matchup are often reversed depending on which country you look at, the extent to which public services are state-funded, and whether legislation is a help or a hindrance. Public and private are not, however, the only options.
This week delegates from around the world descended on London for HBI 2019 to discuss the healthcare market and its various sub-sectors. Here are the things we learnt:
The good news is it is now crystal clear what the winning business models are. The bad news is that no one has worked out how to negotiate the silos. Next week the global for-profit health care sector meets at HBI 2019 in London: What is the main theme?
Ramsay Generale de Sante has revealed just €20m of synergies will be gained from its Capio deal, or around 1.8% of the deal value, highlighting the lower synergies accruable in the hospital sector compared with other sectors where the synergy-to-valuation ratio can be twice as high. Ramsay Generale de Sante’s second, successful offer for the […]
The world is facing a global healthcare workforce crisis. Technology is often cited as the universal panacea to this shortfall - but digital health companies are a long way away from being able to provide a solution - even if legislation allowed them to and the public was ready to fully embrace it.
Will technology and Universal Health Coverage prompt for-profits to try and bring affordable primary care to the uninsured mass markets, a sector those seeking returns routinely ignore?
You would hope that decisions about treatment pathways for patients are made with outcomes in mind – albeit tempered with the realism that having a finite budget brings to the table. This is not always the case.
People with complex mental health care needs require robust staffing and regulatory practices from domiciliary care providers. The UK is falling painfully short of such standards, with the BBC reporting an increase in serious injuries of 300% in the last eight years for residents with complex needs being cared for in the community. Such a rise is shocking and begs the question: If the UK can't manage it, can domiciliary care anywhere really meet the needs of such residents, and at what point do we decide when a patient should move to community care?
HBI has just finished a deep dive into the rehabilitation sector. This small, fragmented, poor relative of acute care is often ignored by operators. A perception of low margins and a reluctance among acute hospitals to refer on to rehab cannot be helping. But things are changing, and new markets are opening up.
Once a year, over 80,000 healthcare operators, providers and experts gather at Dubai's World Trade Centre for four days of Arab Health. According to suppliers, it's the event at which payors and providers begin to think about what they might like to purchase and where they might consider expanding.
A new scandal is erupting in the care home sector. A Nordic nursing home has been found to be falling far short of the standard of care its residents have the right to expect, and an angry public wants someone to blame. Yesterday, the CEO of Finland’s largest nursing home group by revenue fell on […]
A five-week pregnant woman in Singapore today can take out a S$79 insurance policy with MetLife to cover gestational diabetes (GDM). If 12-weeks later her blood glucose tests comes back positive, her nurse can input that affirmative data on the system and the patient is immediately sent S$500 from her insurer.
Primary care is one of Europe's most underdeveloped markets, despite many practices being owned and run as private businesses. Private equity has largely steered clear and the market is yet to find another consolidator. Reform is underway in parts of Europe giving patients more choice in primary care and outpatient settings, however - and this could disrupt the market.
As with any for-profit sector, entrepreneurs are the lifeblood of health care services, although they keep a particularly low profile in this industry - for obvious reasons.
When you talk to anyone about the MENA healthcare market, it’s very hard to steer the conversation away from Saudi Arabia. It’s awash with potential – but is the Khashoggi case having the cooling effect some in the region feared?
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