The phenomenal growth of the healthcare industry over the last few years in Asia has received plenty of attention in local and global markets. To meet the surging demand for high-quality healthcare, coupled with an increasing need to conform to global standards in delivery and management, healthcare service providers across most developed and developing economies of the region are quickly upgrading their IT infrastructures.
I recently saw a couple of healthcare studies from Springboard Research, where it estimated that the total Healthcare IT market in Asia (excluding Japan) is expected to hit US$4.8 billion this year. If the healthcare industry has been saving for the rainy day, then guess what … it’s raining hard!
Back in the mid 1990’s, before someone coined the term “medical tourism,” that concept was known as the international patient business. Travelling internationally to seek healthcare in Asia is very much a norm among the wealthy in the developing nations! What has changed is that demand has now cascaded to include the very large middle class in those countries! Today, we are beginning to see innovative offerings such as medical treatment and procedures on board cruise ships, using on-board facilities that enable patients to recuperate while cruising and relaxing at sea!
Demand drives competition and competition drives differentiation and therefore innovation. Developed nations in Asia and the healthcare providers within them have greatly increased their spending on technologies for medical and diagnostic equipment, care management and patient records, and are now investing in value-added applications to support this IT infrastructure, regulatory requirements and client privacy. Such was the case for Asian Hospital and Medical Center in the Philippines that recently adopted an AMALGA Hospital Information System from Microsoft to support the conversion from paper-driven manual processes to a fully automated environment—to ensure accuracy of data capture, lessen manual transcription in the transfer of patient data and minimize errors in medical results.
Even after patients return home from treatment in many facilities, physicians can continue to communicate with them electronically. For instance, hospitals in Singapore can upload medical-grade images and procedure records as required for continued care and treatment in their home country. By seamlessly linking electronic health record systems (EHRs) to share information across a broad network of providers, this approach provides international collaboration known as “patients beyond borders.” This type of collaboration depends on reliable, high-performance IP networking solutions that Brocade is very well positioned to deliver today!
Brocade – Enabling Healthcare Connectivity and Data Center Efficiency
Any hospital network infrastructure is only as robust as its weakest link. A reliable, distributed, scalable and secured wired and wireless network infrastructure is required for connecting a hospital campus to a wide variety of devices, including laptops, workstations, nurses call stations, equipment tracking for patient diagnostics and administrative/record-keeping functions.
Brocade, in partnership with Motorola, ShoreTel, IBM Security and McAfee, is ready to help healthcare providers meet these requirements while aggressively reducing their Operating expenses. Brocade has a proven history of providing high-quality network infrastructure in thousands of mission-critical data centers around the world. As a result, it can leverage that experience to help healthcare providers scale up to the stringent performance and security expectations of modern medical facilities!
