Samjeong KPMG "Increased Interest in Contactless Medical Care with Entry into the Untact Era"

[Asia Economy Reporter Minji Lee] As the ‘digital healthcare’ market, which integrates IT into the healthcare industry, opens up, the non-face-to-face medical industry is gaining attention as society enters an untact (contactless) era due to the impact of the novel coronavirus infection (COVID-19).

According to the report “Untact (Non-face-to-face) Era and Digital Healthcare” published by Samjong KPMG on the 1st, interest in telemedicine has increased as the government temporarily allowed medical consultations and prescriptions via telephone due to COVID-19. In a consumer perception survey on untact services conducted by the Gyeonggi Research Institute in May this year, non-face-to-face medical services were ranked first (24.7%) among untact services as the field requiring focused development.

Non-face-to-face medical care refers to medical services provided by doctors to patients remotely through telephone, email, video calls, chat, etc. Within the scope of non-face-to-face medical care, telemedicine is included, which means doctors remotely diagnosing patients through video consultations, telephone consultations, second opinions, data interpretation, and so on.

Recently, globally, the scope of non-face-to-face medical care has expanded beyond simple telephone and video calls to include various channels such as chatbots, wearable devices, and artificial intelligence (AI) speakers. Due to rapidly advancing IT technologies, it is expected that more advanced fields will emerge in the future by utilizing patients’ real-time medical information such as body temperature, oxygen saturation, electrocardiogram, and pulse.

The global non-face-to-face medical market has already experienced rapid growth since the early 2000s with active government support. According to the U.S. market research firm Statista, the global non-face-to-face medical market has grown at an average annual rate of 14.7% since 2015 and is projected to reach $41.2 billion (KRW 45.8144 trillion) in 2021.

In the United States, more than 50% of all hospitals currently provide non-face-to-face medical care, and in 2015, the number of telemedicine patients reached 150 million. China has fully allowed telemedicine since 2014 and actively fostered the industry by including telemedicine in public health insurance coverage in 2019.

Not only in developed countries but also in Southeast Asia, the telemedicine market is rapidly growing. Indonesia is making efforts to reduce medical disparities by providing medical services through telemedicine in undeveloped areas.

The report pointed out that the domestic medical market is developing more slowly compared to the global non-face-to-face medical market and emphasized that for the successful establishment of the non-face-to-face medical industry, focus should be placed on the ‘S?A?F?E’ strategy: social consensus, technological innovation, government facilitation systems, and a data connectivity-based ecosystem.

For non-face-to-face medical care to be successfully established, understanding and consultation among stakeholders are essential, and the government must create clear policies and regulations through active intervention. It also stressed the need to secure high technological capabilities that can flexibly realize non-face-to-face medical care, and advised that the government should minimize regulations on digital new technologies and prepare institutional measures to support their realization.

Efficient government facilitation policies are needed to promote the industry. Above all, until market stabilization, various facilitation systems such as active financial support in government R&D and medical infrastructure construction stages, and appropriate guidelines related to medical fees are required. Lastly, ecosystem innovation based on data connectivity must be realized, and an environment should be created so that collected medical information does not remain in one place but circulates among various industry participants to produce groundbreaking effects.

Kyungsoo Park, Healthcare Industry Leader (Managing Director) at Samjong KPMG, said, “For telemedicine to be effectively implemented domestically, integration with reservation systems and electronic medical records (EMR) should be considered together, and the telemedicine industry should be fostered through the construction of medical big data and sharing of data inside and outside hospitals.”

Park added, “When expanding telemedicine services overseas, responding to the laws and regulations of the target country, securing local customer bases and distribution channels, etc., joint ventures (JV) or partnerships with local companies may be more effective than entering alone.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.