More Technology Investment is a Must in Healthcare
Malaysia's total healthcare spending has more than tripled in the last decade— from RM33 billion in 2010 to an estimated RM72 billion in 2022. To further reduce the financial burden, the government has encouraged more private investment in recent years, recognizing the economic multiplier effect of the medical industry. A huge chunk of these funds will be earmarked to invest in technology. As the market continues to grow exponentially and demand more in terms of everything from better services and experiences to cost-effectiveness, healthcare software vendors are in pursuit of generative AI. According to a recent IDC report, generative AI (GenAI) is set to hyper-personalize care services, as almost 50 percent of healthcare providers plan to invest in GenAI use cases.
For instance, one of the most common issues is compiling clinical documentation after every patient-clinician discussion. This is important for compliance, quality measures, and reimbursement, but it is also a complex, multi-step process that takes time away from seeing patients. This is precisely where a new announcement from AWS imbues hope. AWS HealthScribe is a new HIPAA-eligible solution that helps healthcare software providers develop clinical applications leveraging speech recognition and generative AI to generate clinical documentation, saving clinicians a lot of time. AWS HealthScribe will allow them to bank on a single API to automatically create robust transcripts, extract key details (for instance, medical terms and medications), and write doctor-patient discussion summaries, which can be entered into an electronic health record (EHR) system.
However, given the huge demand for solutions in the area, the AWS Partner Network (APN), a diverse network featuring 100,000 partners from more than 150 countries, will have challenges cut out for them. The key lies in understanding the client's precise requirements and customizing the solutions to address those requirements. We further explore Malaysia’s healthcare industry through this yearly special issue.