Healthcare providers need to foster culture of trust amid digital revolution: Doctor Anywhere founder

SINGAPORE: As the healthcare sector increasingly adopts new innovations such as telemedicine and artificial intelligence, healthcare providers must build a culture of trust among their patient bases, said experts. 

This comes as the healthcare scene makes huge strides in recent years, driven by a rise in digital health technologies such as telemedicine. 

“It takes a lot of time to build a business based on trust. And in healthcare, it's only when your user trusts that you are a reliable platform, then they will start to use you,” said Mr Lim Wai Mun, founder and chief executive officer of telemedicine service Doctor Anywhere. 

“We believe that only when the users find you useful (and) the experience is great, they will come back to use you.”

HEALTHCARE TO BECOME MORE BORDERLESS 

Observers said digital health has changed the way societies access medical care in recent years, with the momentum made more urgent during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Consumers are getting a lot smarter, a lot more demanding,” Mr Lim told CNA’s Asia Now on Tuesday (Oct 31). 

“As the population starts to adopt other digital services like online shopping, it's not surprising to see that healthcare is also adopting digital transformation as well.”

He believes healthcare in Southeast Asia, in particular, will become more borderless with technology. 

“It's going to be a lot more inclusive, it's going to be a lot more personalised,” he added. 

“If a good doctor is in Malaysia or in Singapore, then any patient who is suffering from a certain illness should be able to have access to the doctor. It shouldn't be based on where you are born and or where you are staying.” 

However, he noted that there would be a need to bridge the gap, as overcoming such constraints would be expensive. 

OVERCOMING BARRIERS TO ADOPTION

Doctor Anywhere has grown from a telehealth start-up to a regional healthcare provider with a presence in six Southeast Asian countries since it was started in 2017. 

“Launching in every country across Southeast Asia is almost like launching a new company. because healthcare is very localised,” said Mr Lim. 

“In every different country, you have got different healthcare regulations, healthcare practice (and) healthcare culture. So different people in different countries practise healthcare differently.” 

Another challenge is helping the older generation in the adoption of healthcare technology such as telemedicine, said experts. 

Mr Lim said his company is doing well serving people between the ages of 18 and 45, and hopes that these users will be able to influence those above 45 to adopt the telemedicine service too.

“It's not going to be easy because what we also find is that older generations tend to not want to adopt new ways of doing things that readily,” he said on the sidelines of the Singapore Week of Innovation and Technology (SWITCH). The event is being held at the Sands Expo and Convention Centre until Thursday. 

“But I think with the help of the younger population, they should be able to see the benefits of using new ways, new technology to approach healthcare.”

TAPPING AI FOR CLINICAL TRIALS

The SWITCH conference brings together leaders, entrepreneurs, creators, accelerators and investors from the global innovation ecosystem.

At the event, the role of AI in healthcare is also being explored. 

AI is changing the world, and the medical field will be no different, said experts. 

A recent market report by market intelligence firm Business Research Company, for instance, showed that the market for global AI in clinical trials is expected to balloon to US$3.89 billion in value by 2027, from a US$1.19 billion valuation last year.

Typically, clinical trials undergo three stages. 

In the first phase, the new drug will be tested to check its safety and identify the correct dose for larger clinical trials, said Professor Chng Wee Joo, senior principal investigator of the Cancer Science Institute of Singapore at the National University of Singapore. 

“And then in phase two, you'll be using the dose that you have identified to treat a larger population of patients.”

In the third phase, this new medication is compared with the current standard of care, “to show that it is actually better”, he told CNA’s Asia Now.

“This information… will then be used to get the approval of that treatment for marketing, for sales by the company, so that more patients can get access to that trial.”

BETTER REGULATIONS ON THE USE OF AI

Observers said technology can help to tackle the challenges of clinical trials by reducing the costs, identifying the patients who may benefit from a new drug, and shortening the timeline for drug approval. 

“The key challenge is in recruitment of the patients,” said Prof Chng, who is also the executive director of the Singapore Translational Cancer Consortium.

“With AI (and) with digital platforms, you could feed in a set of inclusion and exclusion criteria, and the AI that is linked to the hospital system will immediately identify the list of patients that may be eligible for your trial. 

“So you don't need to look for a needle in the haystack. You immediately know who are the people you should approach, and that should speed up recruitment.”

Technology such as AI can also speed up the time needed to see results in clinical trials. 

Instead of a long study that takes years, the duration could be truncated to “a much shorter period of time”, said Prof Chng. 

However, the World Health Organization has called for better regulations on the use of AI in the healthcare sector, over concerns of privacy, unethical data collection, cybersecurity threats and misinformation.

Prof Chng said this is something that healthcare organisations are mindful of. 

“For us, when we talk about data, it's all anonymised data,” he noted. 

“So it is all within the data security of a hospital system. And none of these data actually goes out to third parties, where the risk may be higher.”