Healthcare innovation – the SA impact

Media release

7 May 2021

Healthcare innovation – the South African impact

We are living in a pivotal moment in the advancement of healthcare, where scientific development and data analytics are providing rich opportunities to prevent, diagnose and treat illness like never before. The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated medical science, with new technologies in medicine and vaccines demonstrating the potential to treat other widespread communicable diseases.

RMB held its inaugural Healthcare Innovation Forum on 21 April 2021 for invited guests only with an impressive panel of industry leaders to discuss the future trends and current solutions in the use of data and technology in the healthcare sector.

Jessica Spira, RMB Sector Head for Healthcare and Hospitality said, “Healthcare is a truly exciting space to provide banking solutions and strategic advice to our clients. At RMB we understand the significant shifts taking place in the healthcare ecosystem, allowing us to expose our clients to the art of the possible.”

Raymond McCauley, Founding Faculty and Chair of Digital Biology at Singularity University opened the Forum with deep insights on how tech and data are shaping the healthcare sector. He defined our current era as ‘The Biotechnology Century’ where a variety of new tools – software, hardware, business processes and breakthrough technologies – are driving a renaissance in biotechnology.

He highlighted several key developments:

Electronic health records will revolutionise the way medical professionals access and learn from data. These will be the first step in driving advances in predictive medicine and machine learning.  

Telehealth consultations skyrocketed during the pandemic, as people practiced social distancing. The rising prevalence of telehealth allows access to patients who couldn’t be reached before as long as they have a good communications infrastructure and internet access. South Africa is a leader in this market, making significant leaps in providing access to remote healthcare.

Wearables take the developments in expensive healthcare hardware and translate them into a cheap, accessible medical or consumer item. More and more, people are not just looking at these for exercise, but to monitor increasingly complex end points such as continuous glucose monitoring.

Digital biotechnology offers new tools for reading and writing DNA based on next generation DNA sequencing and DNA editing. As this becomes cheaper, we are already seeing it      used for the benefit of industries such as prenatal testing, oncology and more.

Epigenetics is an important development for the healthcare sector in that it analyses genetic material in order to determine the origin of illness. Put simply: DNA loads the gun, the environment fires the gun and epigenetics reads the crime scene. The more we are able to read medical data, the more insight we have into treating disease.

When asked where South Africa could focus on innovation in healthcare, McCauley emphasised the importance of the role of telecoms and fintech in supporting telehealth services.

The CEO of Discovery, Adrian Gore, the second keynote speaker at RMB’s event, echoed these sentiments, saying that there is a remarkable opportunity to develop telemedicine platforms in the country – a solution that doesn’t come with the high price tag of some of the more ambitious medical technologies. While great strides have been made in the field of treatment and diagnostics, Gore spoke about the transformative power of behaviour change on recovery and mortality rates, with evidence demonstrating that mortality rates can drop 40%-50% from physical activity alone. He echoed McCauley’s emphasis on the significance of wearables and telematics, saying that as a healthcare insurer, they offer important opportunities to incentivise behavioural changes.

The Forum also provided attendees with the opportunity to meet and engage with some of the leading South African health-tech companies, namely:  First Care Solutions, Guidepost, Healthbridge, Next Biosciences and Quro Medical.

On what makes the South African healthcare sector unique, FirstCare Solutions said, “Our health-tech sector needs to cater for the education of the population in disease prevention, disease management and in many areas appropriate “concierge management” of the resources and referrals. Our growing internet coverage and knowledge will allow us to extend more and more services to underserved areas.”

Guidepost spoke positively on the impact of healthcare innovation on the sector saying, “Current traditional healthcare lacks the systems approach that is required to achieve outcomes for patients. It is impossible for the paying health care customer to obtain the level of information required that could inform rational evidence-based and transparent decision making about their healthcare needs.

Health-tech can put more information in the hands of patients.  Better data and better decision algorithms can help them to navigate the healthcare system to achieve better outcomes, with lower risk.”

“Covid-19 has shone a big spotlight on biotechnology and life sciences, resulting in an explosion of investment, with more risk taking, which is unleashing a wave of innovation and helping to solve some of the world’s biggest health challenges. This innovation is also producing incredible second order effects – like the possibility of finding a vaccine for cancer,” commented Kim Hulett founder and CEO of Next Biosciences.

Dr Vuyane Mhlomi, co-founder and CEO of Quro Medical spoke to the funding requirements of ground-breaking healthcare companies, “We need to create an enabling environment for small businesses to thrive. Additionally, entrepreneurs need access to experts in the field for mentorship, and access to distributions channels.”

RMB is committed to supporting the latest innovations in healthcare, providing unique and relevant solutions to those building the future of our country’s healthcare ecosystem.

End

Contact:

Kate Kelly l Rand Merchant Bank l kate.kelly@rmb.co.za l 079 637 4663