Pakistan is the 5th largest population in the world, but 50% of the population doesn’t have access to primary healthcare. People have access to mobile phones, but not necessarily smartphones. What is the state of healthcare digitalization in the country? 

The primary healthcare network is in the early stages of being built, so people rely on traditional healers. It might happen that doctors and nurses will prescribe pain-relieving medication to help people feel less pain, says Zahid Ali, HIMSS Future50 Health IT Leader in 2021, who is based in Los Angeles but has helped Pakistan with its strategy to manage COVID. 

Low life expectancy, and brain drain

According to World Bank data, life expectancy in Pakistan is low - 67 years, which is 15 years less than for example in Singapore or Australia. The average number of doctors per 1000 patients measured in 2019 in Pakistan was 1.1, which is low, for example, Australia has 3.8 doctors per 1000 people. 

The problem is not, that not enough doctors are trained, said Zahid Ali - the country produced 20,000 new doctors annually, but many of them move abroad. Many women that have a medical degree, don’t transition to the healthcare workforce due to marriage and childcare, explains Zahid Ali.

Strategic approach to population management

In the US, Zahid Ali has been working with the ONC and the Department of Human and Health Services to help set up regulatory frameworks, especially for mobile apps. Coming from Pakistan, he is working with the government to raise digitalization efforts. “If we look at developed countries like the US, UK, France - these countries already have well-structured healthcare systems and digitalization. Pakistan does not. Most of the healthcare work has been done manually and people aren’t receptive to change,” Zahid Ali explains, adding that in today’s world the landscape is changing, primarily because of easy access to information and knowledge. To address the pandemic, the country took a collaborative approach to build an early warning system in three phases. “First we invited private and public providers to provide healthcare services and create an integrated care delivery model. If a doctor wanted to dedicate his time to patient care, he was added to the national platform.” Then, an additional platform was built, named Friend of the country. “We enrolled roughly 5,000 people outside the country to provide care. We took this to the next level with a single digital front door where all available capacities were gathered,” Zahid Ali describes. 

The beauty of this approach was that it did not require high-tech solutions or innovation; it was only infrastructure and organization that leveraged existing resources. “What we did uniquely was to build a complete mechanism for awareness of the people, with the help of mobile ring tones. When people were getting these messages they started complying to recommendations and requirements about masks and other recommendations.”

Opportunities for tech companies

While travel to Pakistan may be advised against, it offers several business opportunities, says Zahid Ali. Most people speak good English and many companies have their back offices in the country. “With the rise in remote work you can arrange a lot remotely. When working here you can test your solutions on a large population with a large volume, but a very fractional cost. About 64 % of youth and more than 30,000 doctors serving abroad is making Pakistan a tech talent destination,” Zahid Ali says.

Tune in to the full episode in iTunes or Spotify.

Listen to other episodes about the APAC region.