Unlocking digital healthcare in lower- and middle-income countries

"The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted—and exacerbated—the gaps in healthcare systems in lower- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Prior to the pandemic, almost a third of the population in those countries lived more than two hours away from essential healthcare services, and the ratio of healthcare workers to population was typically well below the minimum recommended by WHO.1 The loss of healthcare workers to COVID-19 and the disruption of transport systems because of lockdowns have worsened the impact of these issues.

However, a silver lining of the pandemic has been the growth in digital tools, with companies reporting an acceleration in the adoption of digital technology by several years. Digital technologies have tremendous potential not only to improve countries’ responses to infectious-disease threats but also to strengthen primary healthcare. McKinsey and the Exemplars in Global Health have had a yearlong research collaboration focused on assessing digital tools for primary healthcare in LMICs (prioritizing those used during the COVID-19 pandemic) to understand how to harness digital tools to transform primary healthcare systems and to achieve step-change improvements in healthcare.

Digital technologies have tremendous potential not only to improve countries’ responses to infectious-disease threats but also to strengthen primary healthcare.

Achieving such improvement will not be easy, however. To realize the promise of digital healthcare at scale, strong country-led partnerships and enabling environments will likely be required in most instances—and the effort will likely need to focus on known, adaptable technologies and user-centered design. Along those critical success factors, LMICs will likely be expected to focus on effective capability building, sustainable business models, and rigorous monitoring and evaluation.

If LMICs apply these success factors, they could strengthen and broaden the use of digital tools across multiple use cases in primary healthcare. LMIC governments and their partners could then continue toward their goals of shaping the national healthcare ecosystems that connect multiple healthcare journeys and aggregating data for seamless user experiences...." Lire la suite