Incorporating healthcare IT in hospitals, such as using digital records, will help modernize the healthcare system in China. [Provided to China Daily]

 

Dutch company pushes to improve information infrastructure in china's healthcare system

With China pushing to open its medical sector to attract foreign investors, one international health information company is helping Chinese doctors avoid having to read between the lines when dealing with patients.

As experts predict a flurry of foreign interest in the newly deregulated field, Wolters Kluwer Health, a leading health information services and publishing company, is hoping to be among the first major companies to get involved in the largely ignored field.

Preparing for the China launch of its clinical solutions, president and CEO of the division, Arvind Subramanian, says the next decade will be crucial for the way Chinese hospitals, both public and private, employ technology in the doctor's office.

And for companies like the Netherlands-based WKH, there's a billion or more reasons to want to get involved in China's health sector.

Improving the country's healthcare infrastructure was listed as one of the top 10 priorities in China's 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-2015). As a three-year pledge of 825 billion yuan ($131 billion, 99 billion euros) in 2009 to develop healthcare expires, continued financial interest is expected to be shown by the Chinese government.

"China is modernizing its healthcare system through its investment in infrastructure and technology," Subramanian says. "We think now, over the next 10 years, is going to be a big time to get involved and we're in at the ground floor."

WKH laid the foundation for its foray into the China market after a joint venture last year with Chinese health info provider Medicom, located in Chengdu, Sichuan province. The company hopes its deal with Medicom will be a starting point as it eases into China's health information market, Subramanian says.

It's through acquisitions of smaller companies such as Medicom that has allowed WKH to become a global health information powerhouse, he says.

The multibillion dollar company, in terms of sales, has swept across markets in the United States and Europe by obtaining the best companies operating in the same field, including Subramanian's own, ProVation, a US-based point-of-care company bought out by WKH in 2006.

"This is not an overnight success story," Subramanian says. "Many of us, within the companies we built, were (in the health IT field) during the late 1990s when no one was taking our phone calls and no one was interested in the stuff we had."

He says what attracted them to the joint venture with Medicom in the first place was Medicom CEO Lai Qi's efforts to pioneer health information in China during the 90s when health institutions were showing little, if any, interest.

"This guy started in the mid-90s and built out a drug information database when no one even knew what that was. He started on paper, built it out and made it electronic - he's a tremendously committed person," Subramanian says.

Now, as hospitals push to modernize the way they operate, healthcare IT is becoming a flourishing industry - not just in China, but globally.

Like China, the US and Europe have invested billions in seeing their hospitals updated with modern technologies to allow easier access to records, more administrative efficiency, reduced healthcare costs and improvement of overall quality.

"What we do is really focus in a handful of areas at what we call the point-of-care, which is where physicians, nurses and pharmacists treat patients, diagnose their care, and document their care," Subramanian says.

"It's where the action is within a hospital or a physician's office."

But, on an international level, there's still a lot of room for companies like WKH to grow.

A study released in February by health consulting and technology company Accenture showed Spain as a leader in overall healthcare IT "maturity", with around half of Spanish physicians using health IT functions regularly.

WKH hopes to see Chinese hospitals meet and beat those numbers as it pushes products such as UpToDate, a 24/7 online symptom database that allows doctors to search for symptoms or diseases, how to treat them and what regulations govern the treatment.

"That's the type of product we think will have a big appeal as China is updating its healthcare system," Subramanian says.

But while the benefits of implementing healthcare IT into medical institutions are numerous, patients and doctors in the US have expressed some concerns about going digital.

The US Department of Health and Human Services' Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT had to rewrite portions of it's Federal Healthcare IT Strategy plan in September 2011 after experts criticized the original draft for not giving enough detail on how privacy and security of patients' medical records would be maintained.

Still, as the healthcare information technology industry continues to mature, solutions to these problems are being discovered and cost and efficiency benefits often outweigh the risks.

Helping China develop its use of healthcare information technology in medical institutions poses challenges of its own, Subramanian says.

Hospitals in many rural areas lack Internet access, making electronic online databases, like UpToDate, inapplicable.

WKH is also very cautious about protecting the intellectual property of their products as they introduce them to the new market where copycats are a frequent threat.

"Digitizing the Chinese records and system is still in its infancy," Subramanian says.

The fact that it's still developing gives China a chance to skip over the several years it took Europe and the US to reach the level of care that exists in both regions today.

"What we're trying to encourage the Ministry of Health to do is to go straight to the technology solution, whether it's on a mobile application or anything else, and avoid the many years the US spent on non-technology solutions," he says.

"Technology is here now. Just like you don't have to put in landlines anymore because people are going straight to mobile - it's the same situation. We're ready and since China's in reform mode anyway, go to the optimal solution - it's both more cost effective and it's easier to roll out."