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Interview: Jaakko Olkkonen, Wellmo: The future of insurance – Preventative health services and wearables

Savvy insurers - big players like Generali, Germany's second largest primary insurance group, and Vitality in the UK, are moving into preventative health services – suggesting there's money to be saved here. Experts seem to agree within five years, wearable devices feeding information back to health insurance companies may become the norm rather than the exception – and insurers who don't change they way they operate could soon be left behind. One such expert is Jaakko Olkkonen, managing director of Finland-based mobile platform software company Wellmo. Olkkonen admits he has a vested interest in promoting wearable devices and apps which record key health information – like user activity, sleep patterns and heart rate – and feeding it back to insurers. He runs a digital platform designed to facilitate it, after all. But he says his predictions are accurate nonetheless.

Bupa and Axa loss ratios show PMI becoming a much less attractive product

Operators are circulating loss ratio figures from Bupa and Axa which show that the UK's two largest private medical insurers have substantially reduced the amount of premium they pay out over the last five years. The operators are claiming that the pay out rates are far lower than in other PMI markets and mean that PMI has become a poor product for consumers in the UK.

Author defends controversial OECD South African hospital report

In March, we examined a report by the OECD on the affordability of private hospitals in South Africa, and gave space to experts on either side of the debate to discuss the findings. We’re now giving the final author of the report, Tomas Roubal, an economist at the World Health Organisation (WHO), an opportunity to enter the debate after he presented his findings at the Board of Healthcare Funders conference this summer.

Austerity bites in Abu Dhabi

Gulf states are targeting waste in their health systems as the low oil price places government budgets under strain. Co-payments, quotas and VAT may become commonplace in an industry not previously known for having to make economies, and the damage is already showing on operators.

Best Doctors to provide second opinions for Irish parents

The second opinion provider Best Doctors has signed a deal with the Irish state owned private health insurer Vhi to offer its services to parents. We look at the deal and what is tells us about the burgeoning second opinion market.

The future of healthcare in Nigeria: PPPs and the NHIS?

Healthcare investors generally take a fancy to Nigeria. Africa’s most populous country has a growing middle class and will one day finally put some distance between itself and South Africa as its largest economy. The petrodollars already flow freely into healthcare. But no one has bothered to keep them in the country: not the existing fragmented private sector, nor the government, which has other priorities – President Buhari has been treated in London, after all! So, surely, all that’s left to do is fly in, start a JV with a local partner, consolidate and cut off the medical tourism leak at source?

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