From an Egosystem to an Ecosystem: building healthcare systems centred around patients needs

Healthcare systems should be centred around patient needs. Sounding obvious? Sadly, it is not at all obvious in practice. Right now we have silo-ed healthcare systems that aren’t built around patients, but around the needs of the various components of the system (or the egos!). When we think about how to make sure health systems are resilient in the face of crises like Covid-19, we must put patients at the centre. And we have to ask ourselves some fundamental questions: What works for them? How do we integrate care to make the navigation of treatment much easier and more effective? I firmly believe that if we do this, we will also have much more robust and cost-efficient healthcare systems and a huge amount of duplication and wastage can be avoided.??

One thing we heard loud and clear in our discussions at both the UN General Assembly and the World Health Summit is that collaboration is the key to sustainable health solutions. But what does this mean in practice? Especially after COVID, I feel that the term partnership has become a buzzword. There is a lack of true commitment from some stakeholders - and that’s a real shame. To move the needle for patients, partnerships must be grounded in transparency, accountability and appreciation of each others’ strengths, pressures, incentives and goals. We must all be open to feedback - and at times pushback - so that we can adapt, learn and optimise, all in service of reaching our shared goals. In short, we need to put our egos aside, be open to learning and lean-in to the power of an ecosystem that works for patients.?

Today, 50% of the world’s population - that’s 3.5 billion people - still lacks access to essential healthcare services. That is unacceptable. So here are a few of my ideas to work better together and move away from ego, and toward a more collaborative ecosystem that keeps patient needs at the centre and enables them to access the care they need:

• Prioritising Universal Health Coverage.?UHC helps build stable economies and strong societies, so we should be putting our money where our mouth is! Healthcare should be perceived as an investment, not a cost - there is an acute need to continue investing in health, ensuring sustainable and long-term investments.
• Holding us all accountable to delivering progress through tangible targets. For us at Roche, this means rigorously collecting metrics on how we are doing in increasing access to our core therapies in LMICs.
• Break down the silos in healthcare systems so we can really start to create these effective ecosystems around patient needs.
• Forge stronger partnerships by asking the basic questions: what are we trying to achieve over what time frame? Whose expertise do we need? What does success look like? How do we course correct if we need to? Establishing these parameters up front, I certainly believe helps us build trust - which is the real differentiator in a successful partnership.?

I would love your comments and thoughts on these ideas and how we might make them work together!