Technology and Connectivity Could Revolutionize Health in Brazil

By Eduardo Cerqueira, CIO & co-founder of Vidia

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The digital transformation process has grown tremendously in recent months. All sectors have closely witnessed the need to go digital.

With healthcare it was no different, because at a time when we took greater care, companies and institutions created and reinvented their strategies to address the population’s new reality in an extreme pandemic scenario.

The public health crisis puts pressure on the Brazilian National Health System (SUS). Although it is quite efficient, SUS is overwhelmed, and unable to quickly meet all the demands. For instance, in the city of São Paulo alone there are over 150,000 elective surgeries on waiting lists.

On the other hand, every year there is an increase in the number of private hospitals with idle capacity in their surgical facilities, while in recent years almost five million people have lost access to health plans, mostly for financial reasons.

We know that spending on healthcare exceeds R$600 billion per year in Brazil. And it is not enough for the system to be able to serve the almost 210 million Brazilians. We are in no condition to spend more – public accounts are not closed and the cost of supplementary health care grows at more than three times the inflation rate in the country.

It is in this context that technology comes into play. Currently the market relies on the significant growth of health startups. According to a research by Healthtech District Report Brazil 2020, conducted by the open innovation company, the number of Healthechs in the country has doubled over the past five years.

These more than 400 startups provide technological innovation capable of allowing health to reach more people with the same resources. The pandemic caused by Covid-19 has spurred this technological change in the sector, bringing solutions that seemed far from becoming a reality in the past. According to data from Johns Hopkins University in the United States, and the consensus forming in the sector in Brazil, many benefits that have emerged in the period will be permanently adopted, as is expected to occur with telemedicine.

Another example is greater service integration and connectivity. Digital platforms rapidly and intelligently simplify services that were previously somewhat outdated or frozen in time.

Today we can rely on fully online solutions that assertively connect people/patients to healthcare services. When could we have imagined that it would be possible to schedule a surgical procedure with no bureaucracy and no surprise in the prices or to have a medical consultation with a top specialist who is hundreds of kilometers away from the patient, and that the difficult to understand handwriting of a doctor would be replaced by a certified digital prescription integrated into pharmacy networks?

In the technology area, I was pleased to better understand the universe of healthtechs in search of tools to revolutionize the sector and provide hope to thousands of families who only want one thing: access to services offered by private hospitals, which today are largely provided by health plans that are out of touch with the financial reality of the majority of the population.

The most important thing now is that solutions will better address the adversities faced by the population so that together we can solve the vast majority of problems that affect Brazilians’ quality of life. To be innovative one needs accessibility, speed, efficiency, connectivity, integration, and a solution that creates opportunities not only for those seeking the service, but also for other companies. Everything is interconnected.

We can only promote quality in the healthcare system because other partners pursue the same goal and with that, together we create a solution for those who need it and can not wait.