Pole's digital health

Poles are changing their attitudes towards healthcare. Patient expectations are evolving, thanks to the development of the internet and social networks, leading to more awareness regarding patients’ rights By Sergiusz Prokurat A few years ago, Leszek Balcerowicz, then deputy PM in Jerzy Buzek’s, tried to convince Poles to a liberal credo: “Your health is in your hands. Everything is up to you, depending on your lifestyle, diet.” What’s interesting, 70 percent of Poles agree with this statement, steadily increasing their prophylactic testing, doing sports and taking greater care of their diet, as per the “Barometr Bayer 2014” report published by BayLab. Poles’ positive attitude towards health began to change with the fall of communism. An image of a Pole who is tired of life, with a mandatory cigarette in hand, is starting to be yesterday’s news. Poles’ awareness of the impact of an adequate health stance and diet on the proper functioning of the body is growing. Poles are eating ever more vegetables, fruit and poultry. They meet a doctor for consulation more often, commit to prophylactic tests and care for their body, going to the gym, running or swimming. And this is only the beginning, because soon, receipts will be executed with an SMS code, our sugar and heartbeat levels will be tested by a smartphone, the doctor will be chosen online, blood chemistry tests will be provided in digital form and your entire medical history will function as would an online banking account. Poles already know that your health is priceless Looking back, we can see that in the last 20 years Poland has also seen huge changes in terms of the availability of medical services. As recently as the 1990s, patients had to have a small bureaucratic health book full of stamps and you could only get medical care in a huge and inefficient colossus, the public healthcare system, or ad hoc, privately. Often the former and latter were combined, and you went to the doctor with a bottle of cognac in order to avoid the wait. Thanks to market reforms and the development of the private sector, this image underwent a drastic change. “Nowadays, health is no longer a private good. Everyone gains when we become a healthier society,” said Igor Gnot, doctor and businessman, and CEO of Connectmedica, healthcare advertising and communications company, as well as founder of Activeweb, a company providing specialized internet services for doctors. Health is becoming one of the key parameters which define your life. Although there may be no better business than medicine and healthcare, because there is always demand for various medical services, the centrally-steered state institution, NFZ, allocates funds in the healthcare system in an inefficient way. Long lines are a typical example of the inefficient use of health funds. Private firms have taken over the role of providers of health services in Poland. Today, no one is amazed by private hospitals, clinics, where those who can afford it receive their medical care. Some services, such as dentistry, are provided mainly by private entities. Although the construction of closed private medical services was only begun at most a dozen years ago, many companies have a few hospitals in their portfolio. In the last few years, private medical companies have started developing other sectors than those epitomized by multi-specialist clinics. This trend was especially visible during this last year and will grow in strength, as stated by the latest research report by PMR. Good but demanding market The healthcare market in recent years has been very lucrative. An increasing sense of responsibility for your own health, the greater purchasing power of Poles and societal aging mean that the market has grown much quicker in recent years than the Polish GDP. In 2015, healthcare costs worldwide were 10.5 percent of global GDP. North America managed to spend 17.4, Western Europe 10.7 percent, but only 6.6 per cent was spent in Asia and Australia. Poland comes in at about 7.5 percent. But this trend will certainly shift upwards, as by 2050 the number of people over 60 will be three times bigger and amount to two billion people globally. In Europe as much as 37 percent of people will be over 60, meanwhile in Africa – only ten. As soon as three years’ time, the percentage of people over 65 will hit 20 in Western Europe, with Japan seeing 27 percent of its population become senior citizens. According to the authors of the report “Healthcare and Life Sciences Predictions 2020: A bold future?” published by Deloitte, the development of healthcare and the future of pharmaceutical companies will still focus on emerging markets. On the other hand, this sector will soon have to face four major challenges, both local and global, i.e. the effects of population aging and increasing numbers of chronically ill people, large costs and high quality of services rendered, access to medical care in developed countries and emerging markets and also the use of medical technologies in data management processes. Specifically, population aging and increasing numbers of the chronically ill are a sustained trend which will shape demand in the next few years, both for developed and developing countries. “Science is aiming at evermore effective treatment, but paradoxically the role of the patients in the healthcare systems will increase, because it is the attitude (towards a) treatment that will bring more improvement. The patient cannot forget about routine check ups, he cannot forget to take his medicine. He has to pressure doctors and take things into his own hands,” explained Gnot. Digital technologies Currently, thanks to increasing mobile internet access, many users are online 24/7, and thus the monitoring of life parameters of a patient can be conducted in real time, with decision made nearly immediately after the receipt of worrisome information. Thanks to Connectmedica apps such as Moje Leczenie (My Treatment), Zdrowy Kalendarz (Healthy Calendar), for people using smartphones, patients have greater possibilities of planning their own treatment and seeing their results. DBE (Decision-Based Education) may bring about a real revolution, as this project is aimed at the medical and pharmaceutical sector which seeks to standardize actions and enable easier decision-making based on repeatable processes with the possibility of knowledge transfer. A huge problem of medicine has always been an enormous amount of mistakes. After all, the ones prescribing medicine to us are also people and can make a mistake, but their lack of attention may cost someone his life. Let’s imagine a database of medical advice which ascribes the correct treatment based on a set of symptoms, or creates repeatable training modules for doctors. “Digital technologies are the future of the medical sector because thanks to them, patients receive cheaper and more personalized services with simultaneous high-quality and compatibility with legal requirements. New technology will be supported by telemetric medicine, i.e. remote services and diagnostics,” said Gnot. Technological and innovative change is hard not to notice. Deloitte experts reckon that by 2020, people will be much more aware of their genetic profile, the diseases they suffered and may suffer and the availability of healthcare. It is expected that the sale of medical technologies in 2020 will amount to $513.5 billion. As a comparison, in 2013, only $363.8 billion in sales was made. The public system The government is planning key reforms in the years to come. Some time ago, the eWUŚ platform was implemented, enabling quick verification of a patient’s right to treatment, which allowed better identification of people who don’t pay healthcare insurance themselves but are entitled to medical services with the NFZ. By 2017, the Polish healthcare sector is to be digitized. All medical clinics are to be hooked up to the system and no paper documentation is to be used. An SMS code rather than a receipt, a doctor chosen on your computer, your blood chemistry on your laptop and a medical history account as an online bank account – Poland will soon see an e-revolution in healthcare. Public medical centers should, first of all, manage their funds better, which includes the patient’s involvement in the system and creating an order in which patients go through the system. Public healthcare also needs more transparency. Without this, it will always be a black hole sucking in public funds. u