The pandemic has brought healthcare in the Asia-Pacific region to a unique moment. COVID-19 has laid bare health system vulnerabilities and amplified health inequalities. It also vividly demonstrated how a shared sense of urgency and a common purpose galvanised unprecedented innovation, fast-tracking of regulation, and evolution towards sustainability. There is a risk, however, that as the pandemic abates, that the region could lose this innovation momentum.

The crisis is far from over in APAC. Pandemic-shocked healthcare systems are still struggling to cope with the dual challenges of fallout from missed diagnoses, delayed treatments, and pressures to do more with less in the face of growing patient populations and rising non-communicable disease burden. COVID-19 exposed how a hospital-centred care model is inefficient and that the future of care demands patient-centred virtual care, and data-enabled solutions integrated across the continuum of care from precision prevention to personalised care delivery.

APAC's healthcare systems are highly complex, with huge disparities in access, coverage, and quality between countries and often within countries. Too often, regulation is fragmented and fails to keep pace with emerging technology, creating barriers to scaling much-needed tech-led solutions and constraining the value it can create from data-driven decision making to tackling inequity.

As the world reimagines public health, APAC has a unique opportunity to dramatically advance broad-based health to ensure that the future is brighter for those who may not have a voice now. Personalised healthcare and the shift from a one-size-fits-all approach by embracing innovation and decision-making based on data and real-world evidence is key to achieving long-term resilience. This requires strong collaboration across the ecosystem and responsive regulatory frameworks to support the rapidly changing environment for digital healthcare and data technologies. The Asia-Pacific Personalised Health Index can help kickstart this change, by providing the tools and tangible recommendations to help policymakers address challenges and establish resilient, future-proof health systems.

At the HIMSS21 conference on 19 October, Ryan Harper, General Manager of Roche Singapore; Dr Charles Alessi, Chief Clinical Officer at HIMSS; Dr Nares Damrongchai, CEO of Genepeutic Bio; and Peter Forbes, Group Chief Digital Officer, National University Health System, Singapore, will unpack why the present moment provides the perfect conditions for digital healthcare innovation in APAC in a session entitled 'Right care at the right time: why the time is right for personalised healthcare.'¹ These experts will provide fresh insights into how mission-based ecosystem collaboration and agile regulation can optimise evidence-based innovation and play an important role in combatting diseases and improving health outcomes.

¹You will need to register for the HIMSS21 APAC event to access this link. The event is free for all healthcare organisations.