Siemens Healthineers: Transforming data into knowledge for better care

AI has created a dramatic change in the healthcare sector worldwide. As a pioneer in AI development for more than 20 years, what has Siemens Healthineers with its portfolio of products contributed to this change?

Digitalization is critical to technological progress in many industries, and healthcare is no exception. Digitalizing the market and rapid technological progresses are accompanied by changed regulatory demands, cost pressure and growing customer expectations. Highly promising technology is opening up previously unimagined opportunities, thanks to exponential growth in computing power, huge memory capacity and growth in networking.

The healthcare industry needs ways to pull its data together, structure and analyze it, and draw conclusions that lead to improved ways of diagnosing patients and managing therapy. Siemens Healthineers is facilitating this transition with the Siemens Healthineers Digital Ecosystem.

Digitalizing healthcare and combining the power of artificial intelligence can help healthcare providers remain competitive despite shortages of skilled staff and increasing imaging scan volumes. With increasing volumes and complexity of data from different sources and across a range of disciplines, artificial intelligence is the key to make medical technology smarter, image data and lab result analysis faster and examinations more accurate.

Increasing patient numbers, shrinking reimbursement rates and the shift to result-oriented remuneration models - the healthcare industry is facing constant change. Siemens Healthineers introduces Digital Twin, AI Rad Companion Chest CT and syngo Virtual Cockpit solutions that could make work processes faster and easier for radiologists in the face of time pressure and complex cases. Siemens Healthineers uses these technologies to help healthcare providers around the world prepare for the trends affecting the sector and has a leading position in this area.

At Siemens Healthineers, our purpose is to enable healthcare providers to increase value by empowering them on their journey towards expanding precision medicine, transforming care delivery, and improving patient experience, all enabled by digitalizing healthcare.

How has Siemens Healthineers achieved a series of significant results in AI?

Siemens Healthineers believes the future of healthcare will be more personalized and result oriented. The company deploys healthcare digitalization to realize generation, aggregation, and analysis of medical imaging data to enable healthcare providers to increase value during the journey of healthcare industry transformation.

Siemens Healthineers has more than 500 patents in machine learning, 125 patents in the area of Deep Learning and more than 40 AI-based applications to pave the way for healthcare providers worldwide expanding precision medicine to foster individualized prevention and therapy with a precise diagnosis.

In the future, Siemens Healthineers will expand its role as a reliable partner for entering the world of AI in a medical context.

What challenges do you think Southeast Asian countries including Vietnam have to face in providing universal quality healthcare services to the public? How can technology help Southeast Asian countries including Vietnam to overcome these challenges?

Economic development and disposable income have increased the demand for quality healthcare; demographic changes, the emergence of new chronic diseases and health challenges, and the current lack of adequate health infrastructure will only amplify the demand for preventive healthcare. This dynamic creates huge opportunities for technology to transform, improve healthcare in the region, and help bridge the gap between an overall low-quality supply and an increasing demand for high quality healthcare. E-health and healthtech present huge opportunities to ASEAN governments to translate the various healthcare policies put out in the past decade into wider practice.

To bridge the gap between supply and demand for high-quality and affordable healthcare, healthtech providers will have to work in tandem with grassroots communities and educational institutions to give caregivers the necessary and adequate skills to implement these technologies. The strong demand signal should facilitate a more conducive environment for health-oriented investment and startups in Southeast Asia that will allow healthtech to flourish in the region and provide affordable, accessible healthcare to those left on the margins of traditional healthcare systems.

Secondly, my recommendation is big data. It is the key and is informing the movement toward value-based healthcare and is opening the door to remarkable advancements, even while reducing costs.

Healthcare leaders in the country will need to comprehend the potential benefits of digitalization in terms of quality and efficiency of care. They will also be required to understand implications with respect to business models, return on investment, cybersecurity, holistic implementation, and the education of various stakeholders.

A number of multinational corporations are interested in PPP projects in Vietnam’s healthcare sector. What are Siemens Healthineers’ objectives in Vietnam?

We are interested in the PPP model, not only in Vietnam, but also many other countries in the world. As you know, the PPP model needs a good legal framework and we are willing to share our experience in this sector.

We have a long history in Vietnam as a technology and service provider, as well as an education partner. Some of our digital offerings include post-processing solutions to support radiologists in interpreting medical images; diagnostic data archiving and communication systems; teleradiology; medical laboratory data and process management systems; online training management platforms; and hospital asset optimization solutions.

Vietnam is a country with high potential and more work has to be done to access the market. In recent years we have built up a local team who are knowledgeable to advise, train, and support our customers in their projects. We’ve also established collaborations with teaching institutions and hospitals in Vietnam and created collaboration channels with best-in-class hospitals in developed countries to help transfer knowledge and best practices.

Our company is now the largest healthcare infrastructure solution provider in Vietnam with a strong presence in all key areas of healthcare, being one of the most active contributors to capacity building in the country.