Opinion | How smart care and smart hospitals can ease Hong Kong’s health burden
- To meet growing demand, the Hospital Authority is shifting towards using data to provide predictive and proactive care to patients
- New technologies and applications are also being developed as part of a smart hospital strategy
Throughout its 30-year history, Hong Kong’s Hospital Authority has faced profound issues, from escalating demand for its service due to the growing and ageing population to an increasing number of patients with chronic diseases.
This demand will further outstrip supply, and we foresee a major sustainability challenge. Under the guidance of the Hospital Authority Board, a special task group was established in December 2019 to formulate strategies to cope with these challenges.
Two initiatives the task group has looked into are the provision of smart care and the development of smart hospitals.
The essence of sustainability is to balance demand and supply. To address this, the Hospital Authority is adopting a three-pronged strategy: narrowing the upstream; collaborating downstream, and; diverting midstream. One key direction is a shift towards smart care, that is, keeping patients in the community healthy and reducing their need for hospitalisation.
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To narrow upstream demand, it is vital to strengthen disease prevention. With our world-class clinical management system – developed in-house – and large amounts of clinical data, we have a great opportunity to leverage big data to provide predictive and proactive care to patients.