Thailand Bumrungrad Hospital sees future in on-demand telemedicine
Source：Bangkok Post Newspaper
From：Taiwan Trade Center, Bangkok
Update Time：2019/03/07
David Boucher, Bumrungrad Hospital's new chief transformation officer, wants to make a visit to the doctor more like hailing a Grab car.
In his seven months at the hospital, which prides itself on medical tourism, he has pushed the organization to expand into telemedicine through a mobile app.
The app will be launched in the next two months, allowing patients to visit with doctors via video chat, get a diagnosis for some ailments, buy medication through an online store and schedule hospital visits.
"To be honest, it takes too long to get patients scheduled," Mr Boucher said. "But with the app we can change that from months to days."
He said the hospital plans to eventually have two or three doctors working exclusively on telemedicine at Bumrungrad.
The telemedicine strategy fits into Bumrungrad's long-term effort to cement the organization as a top-of-mind brand in medical tourism.
Thailand has made itself a global hub in the medical industry, at first through low costs when the baht was weakest after the 1997 financial crisis, but it has also developed over the years to include world-class quality.
The sector brings in an estimated $US600 million a year, with Bumrungrad accounting for 14% of the market (the highest share of any hospital), according to a report by the International Medical Travel Journal.
Mr Boucher first heard of Bumrungrad in 2006 when working for a medical tourism firm in the US, and even came to the hospital in 2008 to get a colonoscopy. He had his eye on working at the hospital for quite some time.
"It's been on my bucket list that at some point in my life my name would be on a Bumrungrad badge," Mr Boucher said. "Every day at work I am humbled when I look down and see the badge."
In his new role he wants to make Bumrungrad the leader in telemedicine services in the country, but even as "chief transformation officer" he doesn't want to change the strategic course of the hospital too much.
"There's so much good going on here, the last thing I want to do is break it," he said. "In America telemedicine is everywhere, but it's only just beginning in Thailand. The country has such a good broadband connection that it will lend itself well to the service."
Mr Boucher wants to see Bumrungrad improve its position as one of the leading "smart hospitals" in Thailand. Already a robot pharmacist is installed to reduce human error when delivering medication, and the hospital owns several precision surgical robots.
But all this automation has not resulted in a reduction in staff size, Mr Boucher said. The hospital employs about 1,500 doctors, and it still needs pharmacists to double-check the actions made by robots and explain the medication to the patient.
"The intent of robotics is not to replace the doctors," he said. "However, it does reduce the workload and reduce errors by pharmacists, who have to deal with over 3,000 different medications, meaning lots of chances of error."
Mr Boucher said the hospital has no plans to expand abroad. It has a clinic in Myanmar, where the largest portion of foreign patients come from, and has partnered with a hospital in Mongolia.
Source： https://www.bangkokpost.com