Press Release

Concept of Personal Health Management will Finally Gain Recognition in Asia/Pacific in 2013: IDC Health Insights

Singapore and Hong Kong, December 10, 2012 – IDC Health Insights predicts today that the focus for healthcare IT will shift to enabling individuals to take ownership of their health and wellness issues.

This will require collaboration between all stakeholders in the healthcare industry: the acute care, the primary care, the long-term care and the social care structures.

More details are revealed in the IDC Health Insights report, “Asia/Pacific Healthcare 2013 Top 10 Predictions” (Doc # AP9296310U, December 2012), which reveals major trends that will impact healthcare IT investments across Asia/Pacific in 2013.

Healthcare IT has been evolving at a steady pace in the Asia/Pacific region with 2012 being another watershed year. Singapore has embarked on the second phase of the NEHR project, while Australia's PCEHR project was launched earlier in the year, with NEHTA reporting 105,000 consumer sign-ups by July 2012. The aim so far has been to enable the healthcare organizations to provide better clinical care.

"2012 has been an interesting year for Asia/Pacific healthcare IT. As predicted, Australia has launched an active effort to support healthcare providers with health information security standards, and provide guidance around security, privacy and access issues. This sets the stage for more consumers registering for their ehealth records, which will encourage personal health management.

“In Singapore too, as the focus shifts from the acute care sector to the primary care sector and the individual, personal health management will become a reality," says Sash Mukherjee, Research Manager, IDC Health Insights, Asia/Pacific.

"From a technology perspective, healthcare IT executives will look towards converged healthcare solutions, so that they can make use of the advanced capabilities when future needs arise. As an example, EMR/EHR vendors vying for a share of the Asia/Pacific pie will do well to add Health Information Exchange (HIE), clinical decision support, care management and analytics capabilities to their portfolio for the discerning IT executive," adds Mukherjee.

IDC Health Insights' top 10 predictions for the Asia/Pacific region in 2013 are categorized into three areas:

• those related to the governments' citizen-centric focus

• healthcare organizations' need to be agile, and

• the development of a collaborative healthcare system, involving all stakeholders

Table 1: Three of IDC Health Insights Asia/Pacific's top 10 Predictions for 2013 (listed in no particular order)

Collaborative healthcare will see an emergence of care management including primary and social care	With the shifts in the population trends and the disease burden, there is a need for a collaborative effort across the entire care continuum. Information sharing will be the key, with the primary care provider or a social caregiver at the center of the process.
Bring Your Own Mobile Device will gain popularity in Asia/Pacific	There is a steadily increasing trend of healthcare organizations framing 'BYOD' policies, forced by the clinician’s desire to use a single device for personal and clinical use. Healthcare IT executives in the region will plan for the requirement to support multiple OSs and devices. Eventually device management will encompass information and application management.

Healthcare providers who wish to succeed will invest in robust analytic tools, business intelligence, and clinical decision support to measure and improve clinical outcomes, operational efficiency and patient satisfaction.

IT vendors operating in the Asia/Pacific region will have to consider partnering or building cloud-based capabilities, and help providers optimize through service-based models. Interoperability and integration with existing clinical systems will remain the key driver of adoption.

For more information about this report, “Asia/Pacific Healthcare 2013 Top 10 Predictions” (Doc #AP9296310U, December 2012), please contact Madhura Moulik at +91 80 6699 1090 or mmoulik@idc.com.

For more information, please contact:

Sash Mukherjee
smurkerjee@idc.com
+65-6829-7778

Emily Chia
echia@idc.com
+65-6829-7731