Headquartered in the Netherlands, Royal Philips, a global leader in health technology, has released the Asia Pacific (APAC) findings of its Future Health Index (FHI) 2024 report: Better care for more people. 

The ninth edition of the report, which surveyed nearly 3,000 healthcare leaders in 14 countries, including Australia, Indonesia, and Singapore, shows that healthcare leaders are focusing on improving operational efficiencies through workflow prioritisation, data integration, and artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled innovation to improve patient care impacted by workforce shortages, financial challenges, and growing demand.

71% of healthcare leaders in APAC are concerned about staff shortages resulting in delays in care for patients. Furthermore, 92% of healthcare leaders in APAC highlight that financial challenges are impacting their organisation's ability to provide timely, high quality-care, with 59% of them currently improving operational efficiency at their organization as a financial strategy. Other countries are doing the same, including Singapore (64%), Indonesia (57%), and Australia (56%).

Looking towards the next step in AI, generative AI adoption is taking off in APAC with healthcare leaders recognizing the benefits of AI algorithms that can be used to produce content such as text, images, or data, in response to inputted prompts. This could benefit patient care by unlocking new efficiencies and insights from patient data. In APAC, 36% of healthcare leaders are currently investing in generative AI technologies. 62% are planning to invest in these technologies in the next three years, consistent with interest in Indonesia (74%), Singapore (64%), and Australia (49%). Overall, APAC's interest in generative AI is ahead of global healthcare leaders currently investing (29%) and planning to invest in the next three years (56%).