30-Aug-16 China’s State Council has declared that healthcare big data is a fundamental, strategic resource. By 2020, it plans to establish and continuously improve the inter-connectivity of Public Health Information Platforms and National Medicine Purchasing Business Platforms, to reduce information barriers thereby boosting sharing and utilisation of healthcare data, and to set up 100 model regional clinical data demonstrators. [image: McKinsey]

30-Aug-16 Australia’s first large-scale trial of telehealth has shown it could save up to AUD3 bn (USD2.3 bn) a year. The research involved trialling telehealth systems with 287 patients over 12 months. It showed savings of 24% to the healthcare system made through falls in the number and cost of GP visits, specialist visits and procedures. [image: CSIRO]

29-Aug-16 VMware, a cloud solutions company, is working alongside Ministry of Public Health Thailand to enable a digitalised healthcare system for the local population. With more than 10,000 health IT units across Thailand's 76 provinces, the ministry said there was a need to consolidate health IT infrastructure, and enable the prompt exchange of information. [image: MIS Asia]

26-Aug-16 Korea's KT is focusing on three large healthcare areas – bioinformatics, disease diagnosis solutions, and customized personal healthcare services based on wearable devices. NeoFit, to launch in Sep-16, is a smart healthcare wrist band which can analyze workout rates by body part, allowing the device to gather massive datasets and offer customized healthcare services. [image: Business Korea]

19-Aug-16 To treat cancers Singapore is investing close to SGD100 mn on a proton beam therapy system which causes much less damage to healthy tissue than current radiation therapy. With about three in five cancer patients requiring radiation, the National Cancer Centre Singapore has been studying the technology for a decade, but cost and size have been major inhibitors. [image: Tiffany Goh / The Straits Times]