Study reveals how digitalization is transforming Thailand's hospital system

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YCP Solidiance, an Asia-focused strategy consulting firm, recently published a new white paper titled "The Future of Smart Hospitals in Thailand: How Digitalization is Transforming Thailand's Hospitals System," highlighting that smarter hospitals and more digitalized systems can help address Thailand's issues of an aging society, increasing healthcare costs, and continually changing medical needs.

As Thailand enters an aging society, the country is expected to reach a 0.3% population growth rate in 2024, with more elderly people and more complex healthcare needs. Adding to that, the country lacks human resources and is constrained by infrastructure limitations.

Digitalization is viewed as one of the best approaches to address this issue while meeting immediate needs and helping achieve long-term goals.

Technology is essential to enable digitalization in healthcare, which includes recommendations to focus on:

• Digital solutions - investing in new technologies to tackle operational challenges and to meet industry needs that are continuously changing.
• Smart devices - creating a seamless patient flow to reduce congestion, allowing pharmacists and healthcare personnel to spend less time on routine tasks but focusing more on patient care.
• Telehealth - offering remote consultations to improve facilities and increase the efficiency for patients. However, to do so, Thai healthcare still lacks a centralized patient data source. This shows the opportunity for investors to dive in, and to lead Thailand's health ecosystem to a more sustainable and digitized one.