Asia 'becoming a hub for transformation in healthcare'

Singapore

ASIA is increasingly becoming the centre of healthcare transformation because of its ability to leapfrog legacy systems, but, that said, medtech entrepreneurs should be prepared to be in it for the long haul and not cut corners, speakers at the Echelon Asia Summit 2019 said on Friday.

Antonio Estrella, managing director of healthtech investment and advisory firm Taliossa, said the region is making multinational corporations, investors and entrepreneurs sit up for being able to transform healthcare faster than other regions.

It takes 17 years on average for a medical innovation to achieve mass adoption, but Asia can shorten that window drastically for a few reasons, he said.

"No. 1 is the nature of how mobile-centric our lives are here, and the fact that we live in developing regions. Healthcare can leapfrog legacy systems that in the West might slow things down; there, you have to deal with hospital systems that have been in place for years, but in Asia, those are brand new or don't exist, and there's now a race to fill that gap."

Astrid Irwanto, co-founder of genetics-testing startup Nalagenetics, said countries like the US and Iceland are more advanced in their national "precision medicine" programmes that make use of population genetics. "Those governments are trying to enable people to hold in their hands their genetic information, which will change how they receive healthcare. Here in Asia, I find that a little lacking," she said.

She added that the use of genetics in disease diagnosis and prevention is rising, and localisation in Asia is important but behind the curve, "so we better play early and understand ourselves early, and not lag 10 years behind what the Western world can provide for healthcare for everyone."

Carl Nicholas Ng, co-founder and chief operating officer of software-as-a-service startup Lifetrack Medical Systems, pointed out, however, that although entrepreneurs are rushing to capture the opportunities in the Asian market, they must refrain from being too hasty in pushing out their product; after all, the health and lives of people must take the utmost priority.

Mr Ng, who was a consultant with Bain & Company and worked on business development and partnerships at Silicon Valley startup Peek, said he used to close deals with customers within a day or two, and had thought that he could perhaps do the same in a month or two in healthcare.

"But some of these conversations that I've had have taken two years of follow-ups and demonstrations, down to pilot studies, proof-of-concept and getting clinical stakeholders involved."

The rate of adoption in healthcare will always be much slower than in most other industries, especially when compared to business-to-consumer startups. Medicine is inherently conservative, he said, and startups run the risk of harming people if they do not have a full-fledged product that works as expected.

"So the idea of a 'minimum viable product' or 'fake it till you make it' might land you in jail, like the Theranos lady," he said, in a reference to Elizabeth Holmes, the former chief executive of blood-testing startup Theranos, who is on trial in the US on multiple charges of fraud.

"There are no shortcuts in healthcare. It's really about building trust with your stakeholders and being in it for the long haul," he said.

The Echelon Asia Summit, held at the Singapore Expo, has drawn 15,000 participants, comprising startups, investors, aspiring entrepreneurs, corporates and government agencies, to discuss the issues and opportunities in Asia's emerging markets and ecosystem.