This article is written from an interview with Mr Ruch De Silva, Head of Payor & Patient Solutions at DKSH Healthcare
Southeast Asia presents a fascinating paradox: a region surging with technological adoption and economic growth, yet grappling with healthcare systems often hindered by fragmentation and disparity. The ambition of achieving truly integrated, accessible, and high-quality medical care faces persistent challenges. This complexity stems from a confluence of factors, including the diverse regulatory landscapes across different countries that complicate the implementation of standardised digital health solutions, and varying levels of healthcare infrastructure and maturity. Adding to these systemic issues, as Ruch De Silva, Head of Payer & Patient Solutions at DKSH Healthcare, pointed out, “Inadequate infrastructure in rural areas also hinders access to digital tools, while a shortage of skilled healthcare professionals exacerbates inefficiencies, as existing staff often lack the training needed to manage digitised systems.” These are not theoretical obstacles; they are tangible barriers impacting millions seeking consistent, quality care.
Overcoming such deeply embedded challenges requires a transformative approach, one that leverages technology to fundamentally redefine how healthcare is delivered. This is the driving force behind integrated, patient-centric platforms like DKSH Patient Solutions. Born from a clear recognition of the region’s fragmented healthcare landscape, DKSH Patient Solutions platform is designed to bridge these gaps and, as Ruch explained, “empower patients by placing them at the centre of the healthcare journey by improving availability, accessibility, and convenience.” By building with local insights and navigating the complexities of diverse national regulations, DKSH aims to forge a more unified and accessible healthcare experience across Southeast Asia.
Bringing Healthcare Beyond the Clinic Walls
One of the most immediate and practical benefits of integrated digital platforms for individuals is the extension of healthcare services beyond the confines of physical clinics and hospitals. In a region where geography can be a major barrier and travel a burden, bringing care closer to the patient is crucial for improving access and ensuring continuity of treatment.
DKSH Patient Solutions’ platforms facilitate a range of home-based and remote care solutions. Telemedicine stands out, enabling remote consultations that significantly reduce the need for patients, particularly those in distant or underserved areas, to travel long distances. As Ruch noted, this is “particularly beneficial for the elderly, patients with mobility issues and those in rural areas.” When you consider the uneven distribution of medical professionals, such as the low doctor-to-population ratio in some rural parts of the region, telemedicine becomes an indispensable tool for extending the reach of limited medical expertise.
The platform’s capabilities extend beyond consultations to practical logistics. Direct-to-patient delivery services ensure essential medications and supplies reach individuals at their homes, overcoming significant infrastructure and logistical challenges. Integrated services like Home Pulse further support this by offering safe transportation for tests or medication delivery. Ruch highlighted that this service actively “prioritises patient convenience by minimising travel time, wait times, and disruptions to daily routines.”
Supplementing these direct services are digital engagement tools designed for ongoing patient involvement and education. A Patient Education Portal digitises educational resources into interactive formats, accessible on demand, empowering patients with knowledge about their health. Features like medication and symptom trackers, combined with multi-channel support, help patients stay connected and adhere to their treatment plans. This ecosystem creates multiple points of contact, allowing the platform to “gather insights into their unmet needs, and provide tailored support to enhance overall satisfaction,” according to Ruch. The platform’s proven ability to run over 200 programs across eight markets in the Asia-Pacific region and support multiple languages demonstrates the essential scalability and adaptability required to cater to the region’s immense diversity.
The Data Engine: Powering Personalisation Securely
At the core of delivering effective, personalised remote and home-based care lies the intelligent and secure management of patient data. Integrated digital health systems generate vast amounts of information – medical histories, treatment plans, adherence data, communication logs, and more. Transforming this raw data into actionable insights is the crucial engine that drives personalised care pathways and improves outcomes.
DKSH Patient Solutions’ platforms employ a sophisticated technical architecture for robust data management. Data is aggregated into a secure data lake infrastructure, processed by a rule-based engine for consistency. To ensure patient privacy while enabling analysis, the platform incorporates crucial layers: a synonymised layer for data mapping and integration, and a vital anonymisation layer that protects sensitive personal information. This layered approach ensures “secure data analysis without compromising patient confidentiality,” allowing the platform to safely leverage data as a powerful resource.
The ultimate objective of this data management is to enhance healthcare delivery and patient outcomes. As Ruch explained, when handled safely, “healthcare systems can leverage on this wealth of data resource to ensure that providers can analyse trends, identify gaps, and improve service delivery – ultimately enhancing performance and leading to better health outcomes.” By analysing anonymised data on patient trends, adherence, and engagement, healthcare providers gain insights that enable them to “refine healthcare strategies and enhance patient outcomes.” This data-driven approach is fundamental to delivering the “personalised patient experiences” that make care more effective and engaging, contributing to a significant shift towards “more personalised care, early intervention, and continuous monitoring.” DKSH views its Patient Solutions’ platforms as a “catalyst for digitising and integrating Southeast Asia’s healthcare systems”, providing a concrete example of how digital solutions can mitigate complexity by focusing on patient-centric concepts like Access, Adherence, and Convenience, all powered by the effective use of data.
Trust is Paramount: Navigating the Security and Compliance Maze
In the digital healthcare space, trust is the bedrock, built upon rigorous data security and unwavering compliance. Handling sensitive health information across markets with differing regulations is a significant challenge. DKSH prioritises this, implementing practices to “ensure patient trust and safety.”
Navigating the complex regulatory environment across Southeast Asia requires dedicated expertise. DKSH maintains a regional compliance function and develops country-specific SOPs to ensure alignment with local regulations. Beyond policy, robust technical and organisational measures are essential to safeguard patient data against cyber threats. This includes secure access controls, advanced encryption protocols, regular security audits, and continuous system monitoring. Adherence to international standards like ISO 27001, GDPR, and HIPAA is a cornerstone of their data security framework. Transparency is also key, with all interactions being “auditable via eAudit logins, with support from accredited industry leaders like Accenture and PwC,” providing crucial accountability. Balancing personalized communication needs with privacy is managed through secure messenger systems integrated within the platform.
The AI Horizon: Empowering Analysis for Better Health
The secure, structured data environment established by integrated platforms provides a powerful foundation for the next wave of healthcare innovation: Artificial Intelligence. While the current focus is on leveraging data to generate actionable insights and analyse trends for healthcare providers, AI has the potential to dramatically enhance these capabilities.
AI algorithms are exceptionally skilled at processing vast, complex datasets to identify subtle patterns and predictive indicators that might be imperceptible to traditional methods. Building upon the secure data infrastructure and analytics layers, AI could significantly improve the ability to analyse patient data for earlier identification of health risks, prediction of treatment responses, and further refinement of personalised care plans based on aggregated learnings from similar patient profiles. This is not about replacing clinicians but augmenting their expertise with sophisticated data-driven intelligence, leading to more informed decisions and potentially more proactive and effective interventions. The evolution from current analytics to AI-powered insights represents a significant step towards making personalised healthcare more precise, efficient, and impactful.
Digital Inclusion and Integration will make healthcare more personal and allow it to exit the four walls of a diagnosis room
The challenges facing healthcare systems in Southeast Asia are substantial, but the development and deployment of integrated digital platforms like those from DKSH Patient Solutions offer a compelling vision for the future. By focusing on patient centricity, securely managing and leveraging data, and expanding the reach of care through remote and home-based services, these platforms are directly addressing key regional pain points.
The ability to deliver high-quality, personalised care conveniently to patients, regardless of their location or mobility, represents a transformative step forward. Empowering patients with knowledge, facilitating continuous engagement, and providing healthcare providers with data-driven insights fosters a more effective and responsive healthcare ecosystem. This shift towards truly personalised care, delivered securely and built upon robust technological architecture, holds immense promise for improving not only the efficiency of healthcare systems but, more crucially, the health outcomes for individuals across Southeast Asia. As digital integration deepens and the capabilities of AI in healthcare analytics continue to advance, the future of accessible, equitable, and personalised healthcare in the region looks increasingly promising.
This article is written from an interview with Mr Ruch De Silva, Head of Payor & Patient Solutions at DKSH Healthcare
| Ruch De Silva Head of Payer & Patient Solutions DKSH Ruch de Silva joined DKSH as Director, Service Development for Patient Solutions in October of 2018. He was designated Head of Patient & Payor Solutions and M&A Lead in July 2024 and is a member of DKSH Business Unit Healthcare’s Senior Leadership Team. Ruch has over 16 years of experience in the healthcare industry. He held previous senior positions at Datamonitor Healthcare and at Takeda, where he was the Director of Business Operations and Analytics. He has a proven track record of delivering high impact growth initiatives across various areas that ultimately lead to improved patient outcomes. |
