First-of-its-kind Index reveals Malaysia’s positive progress towards Personalised Healthcare
Newly launched Personalised Health Index for Asia-Pacific measures the readiness of 11 countries to embrace more tailored patient care
Greater interoperability and better systems of capturing health-related data should be a key aim across the region
Overall, Malaysia is at 8th place, but was also3:
Ranked 3rd for good financial support for scale-ups, revealing that new personalised health technology companies should be able to find support developing solutions for the Malaysian market
Ranked 7th for personalised health strategy, this could be improved by advancing a national strategy or policy for personalised health or personalised medicine
Ranked 7th for data infrastructure, has room for improvement for healthcare digitisation, as the foundation for the application of personalised healthcare
Findings show the transition towards personalised healthcare is underway in Malaysia and reveal enormous potential in improving existing health outcomes.
Today, we revealed the Personalized Healthcare Index for Asia- Pacific focusing on Malaysia. This follows the recent launch by FutureProofing Healthcare initiative, led by a panel of 15 leading healthcare experts across Asia-Pacific, who crafted the Asia-Pacific Personalised Health Index. This first-of-its-kind, data-driven policy tool measures the readiness of 11 health systems across the region including Malaysia to adopt personalised healthcare – enabling the right care to be tailored to the right person at the right time.
The Index is built on robust, publicly available, credible, and open-source data supplemented with input from public health authority representatives across APAC and validated by a panel of independent healthcare experts including Prof. Dr. Maude Elvira Phipps, Professor of Human Genetics at the Jeffrey Cheah School of Medicine and Health Sciences, Monash University Malaysia. The FutureProofing Healthcare initiative – supported by Roche – aims to help stakeholders across health ecosystems understand local, national, and regional strengths and needs. It also helps enable tailored, data-driven decision-making and encourages best practice sharing across the region to drive conversations and guide actions to improve health systems and enhance their readiness to adapt to rapid change.
Health systems across Asia-Pacific, including in Malaysia are facing challenges related to growing populations, and rising costs, which have only been compounded by the rise of non-communicable diseases and the current COVID-19 pandemic. This is coupled with a lack of regulatory strategies and policies to enhance digital health technologies. Adopting more personalised approaches can improve health system efficiencies by helping decision-makers prioritise their efforts and resources, and initiate policies and frameworks that support healthcare innovation.
The Personalised Health Index measures performance against 27 different indicators of personalised health across four categories called 'Vital Signs'. These include (1) Policy Context, (2) Health Information, (3) Personalised Technologies, and (4) Health Services.
While, regionally, the Index reveals significant disparities between the countries measured, encouragingly, the results show that this transition towards personalised healthcare is underway and gaining momentum in Malaysia as well. Challenges around policy and personalised technology impact lower-scoring territories, several of which are at the very early stages of personalised healthcare.
Table: Overall Asia Pacific Personalised Health Index 2020 performance1
To achieve long-term resilience, health systems must strive for a personalised healthcare framework that leverages data, analytics, and technology to generate meaningful insights, inform decision-making, drive innovation supporting both individual and population health – and empowers patients to manage their health.
Malaysia is in the process of formulating and implementing plans that aim to enable personalised healthcare and has a digital infrastructure and data collection capabilities that can support limited aspects of personalised care. Increasing investment in research and development, streamlining regulatory processes, opening access to data for research, improving access to digital health services, and building capacity in the healthcare workforce are potential focus areas for Malaysia. In addition, there is a need for a strong emphasis on health ethics and equity to address issues of access and quality in Malaysia as it makes its’ transition to personalised healthcare3 .
“Personalised healthcare can transform patients’ lives by delivering care tailored to the individual and populations, thereby helping prevent, diagnose and treat patients more effectively and quickly. It has the potential to improve the lives of millions of people across Asia-Pacific. It is clear that better health access, literacy, and collaborative partnerships are needed across the region,” said Prof. Dr. Maude Elvira Phipps, Professor of Human Genetics, Monash University Malaysia, one of the independent experts involved in the development of the Index. The Index was developed to drive evidence-based decisions in policy and healthcare and help various countries measure their progress towards more sustainable, personalised, integrated, and digital health systems. This Index helps to facilitate critical changes in health system design that works better for current and future generations,” said Professor Phipps.
“We are proud to support this novel, data-driven initiative to measure and accelerate progress towards personalised healthcare in Malaysia,” said Lance Duan, General Manager of Roche (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd. "FutureProofing Healthcare brings together core elements of Roche’s vision for a better future for healthcare, including innovation in treatment, advances in technology, understanding of human biology, and the ability to analyse data to make the promise of personalised healthcare a reality. We are committed to working in partnership with policymakers to leverage the opportunities and address key areas of focus highlighted in the Index, to ensure Malaysia continues to develop more resilient and sustainable health systems that work better for the people who need them."
The Index findings have also been published in a whitepaper “Getting to Personalised Healthcare in APAC” coordinated by the Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies and informed by expert insights from across Asia-Pacific. The whitepaper also includes several policy recommendations based on the Index findings to help accelerate this transformation in the region.
The Personalised Health Index and whitepaper are now available on FutureProofingHealthcare.com.
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