The Health | november, 2019
12
Health business
Google
opens up
about their
health plan
Our healthcare to
surpass RM 2 billion
Malaysia’s attraction in healthcare is projected to be one of the key contributors to
a better economical state next year
M
alaysia Healthcare Travel
Council (MHTC) expects the
country’s healthcare earnings
to surpass RM2 billion, with
an estimated total economic
impact of RM8 billion in 2020.
This would be fuelled by around 2 million
international healthcare tourist arrivals
next year, Chief Executive Officer of MHTC
Sherene Azli said.
A complete healthcare package
According to Sherene, the local healthcare
offerings were presented as a comprehensive
package with all the right ingredients for
healthcare travellers, namely world-class
quality, easy accessibility and competitive
affordability.
She added that medical services here are
regulated with ceiling rates governed by the
Health Ministry.
“Access to medical services have virtually
no waiting time, due to structured systems
adopted by Malaysia’s private healthcare pro-
viders,” she said at the launch of the Malaysia
Year of Healthcare Travel 2020 (MyHT2020)
recently.
Rocketing prospects
She told that Malaysia’s natural geographic
wonders, heritage sites and cityscapes are
the cherry on the top for patients seeking
a relaxing twist to the healthcare travel
experience.
“As a result, we have seen only an encour-
aging growth in the number of healthcare
travellers to Malaysia, nearly double the
number of arrivals between 2011 to 2018.”
Malaysia recorded about 1.2 million
international healthcare tourists last year
with a total of RM1.5 billion in hospital
receipts, contributing RM6.4 billion to the
gross domestic product (GDP).
Sherene said MHTC had targeted about
1.5 million international healthcare tour-
ists this year with a total of RM1.8 billion in
hospital receipts.
A healthcare destination
The MyHT2020 was launched in tandem with
the national Visit Malaysia 2020 (VM2020)
campaign.
MyHT2020 aims to promote Malaysia as
the healthcare destination for international
patients to seek health and wellness treat-
ments, while enjoying the country’s tourism
attraction.
Among the top countries that seek
medical treatment in Malaysia are the United
Kingdom, Australia, Japan, India, China and
those in Asean.
Finance Deputy Minister Datuk Wira
Ir Amirudin Hamzah said MyHT2020 will
shine a spotlight on Malaysia as a leading
global destination for healthcare which
continues to grow.
“In terms of revenue, Malaysia health-
care’s cumulative aggregated growth rate
has been an encouraging 17 per cent from
2015 to 2018.”
Meanwhile, Malaysia Airlines Bhd
and MHTC signed a memorandum of
understanding to strenghten the domestic
healthcare travel industry service offerings.
— The Health
In terms of revenue, Malaysia healthcare’s
cumulative aggregated growth rate has
been an encouraging 17 per cent from
2015 to 2018.”
Google hired David Feinberg from
Geisinger Health, a system of hospitals
based in Pennsylvania, toward the end
of 2018 and put him in charge of a
newly created division called Google
Health. But the company has remained
quiet about the division’s scope and
goals.
Now he’s beginning to talk publicly
about his plans, and appeared on stage
at HLTH, a health care conference in
Las Vegas recently.
Feinberg, a doctor who describes
himself as “no tech guy,” is focusing
his efforts on Google’s core expertise
in search, looking to make it easier
for doctors to search medical records,
and to improve the quality of health-
related search results for consumers
across Google and YouTube, according
to his statements at HTLH and con-
versations with people familiar with
his plans.
Google has dabbled in healthcare
for years, lured by the size of the
opportunity. Healthcare represents a
$3.5 trillion market, which still relies
on a lot of manual processes.
But the company has struggled with
some of its early endeavours, such as
its contact lens that aimed to measure
blood glucose in tears and its Google
Health medical record service, so the
hire of Feinberg out of the traditional
health sector is a recognition that the
search giant will need to partner with
the medical sector to have an impact.
Better search in medical records,
YouTube, and Google Search
While on stage at HLTH, Feinberg
described some of the ideas he’s been
kicking around to bring Google’s
technology into health care.
“Imagine a search bar on top of
your EHR (electronic health record)
that needs no training,” he proposed
to the doctors and nurses in the room.
That would be a big deal for clini-
cians. Feinberg noted that his fellow
doctors had become “data clerks,”
given all the time they spent charting,
assigning billing codes and filling out
fields in medical records. He didn’t
go as far as to say that Google would
compete with some of the existing
electronic health record companies,
like Epic and Cerner, but he did sug-
gest that Google could help with some
of the grunt work. — The Health