Healthcare digitalization in South America Ep. 1: How digital is Peru? (Jhonatan Bringas)

“Before COVID-19 hit telemedicine wasn't well understood in Peru and South America, leading to lawsuits against providers offering it. However, since the pandemic began its use has increased rapidly, particularly in private care,” says Jhonatan Bringas, MD.

Private healthcare drives innovation in Peru, and its uptake was later followed by public health, says Jhonatan Bringas, a Peruvian doctor, based out of the Netherlands. After holding several executive positions in the health tech industry, Bringas co-founded a startup Lapsi which is developing a digital stethoscope and other solutions in the digital diagnostics space.

In the past, he worked across continents, as a physician in the US, Cuba, Netherlands. With his clinical background and heavy involvement in the digital health industry, he’s returning to Peru on a regular basis as a visiting lecturer about innovation in healthcare digitalization.

Doctors want technology but need to understand it first

“There's a lot of appetite by physicians to learn about digital health, wearables, artificial intelligence. They see it around them. They see the vendors and distributors bringing them to the hospital, but they don't understand innovations and they can't implement something that they don't understand,” says Bringas. In his view, more effort should be put in upskilling doctors and educating them about solutions on the market, so they can be translated in clinical practice.“Something we've learned already by now and the digital therapeutics debacle has shown us, is that the market needs to be ready for something before something that can be implemented,” he comment on the recent bankruptcy filing of the DTx market leader Pear Therapeutics.

Jonathan has developed a course on technology and AI for clinicians due to the increasing interest from physicians. In his assessment, Peru's policymakers are not as hungry as other ecosystem actors when it comes to implementing new technologies, but there is potential for growth in private care.

Private care as the driver of innovation adoption

While private care is driving the adoption of innovation, technologies are slowly entering the public health market space, primarily for tackling epidemiologic needs, observes Bringas, adding that physicians in Peru often practice both publicly & privately.

In this episode, Jonathan talks about the implementation of hospital systems in Peru and their efforts toward standardization and interoperability with data compilation systems. They are also working on creating patient-centric platforms and omnichannel communication systems. The adoption of AI algorithms is still low due to a knowledge gap, but there is an appetite for it.

Jonathan believes that Peru is an emergent market in digital health, with a lot of curiosity and appetite for solutions.

This is just an excerpt. Tune in for the full episode.

Show notes

Introduction (00:00-00:52)

The topic of the episode is the Peruvian healthcare system and its level of digitization.

Jonathan's Background (00:52-03:38)

Jonathan talks about his work in Latin America and his current role as an advisor at Clinical International.

He also discusses the challenges of implementing new technologies in hospitals.

Healthcare Digitalization in Peru (04:06-09:02).

Jonathan explains that there are some hospitals implementing electronic health record systems and telemedicine, but there is still a long way to go.

He also discusses the potential for startups to work with public hospitals in Peru.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Healthcare (09:02-19:44)

Jonathan talks about a course he created on technology and AI for clinicians, which was well-received.

He discusses the need for an ecosystem of collaborators to provide knowledge in this space.

Strengths of Healthcare Digitalization in Latin America (23:18-25:30)

The hunger for progress in the region and the potential benefits for patients.

The guest also talks about the importance of validated data in ethnicities with epidemiologic components.