Surge in US health sector opportunities

HANS FRAUENLOB: The United States in terms of international health care markets is far and away the largest market and has quite acute needs in terms of reforming its health care system.

The United States currently spends about 17 and a half per cent of its GDP on health, and arguably health care costs is one of the main contributory factors of why General Motors has gone bankrupt.

So the needs are absolutely acute in America, and they're investing quite heavily in terms of developing them.

LISA ANDRES: We're focused on the United States market for a number of reasons.

I mean, first of all, it's a huge market. The US spends two trillion a year on health, and they're going to be spending an extra three billion on health as a result of the recent stimulus package.

Also, there is a tremendous need for new innovations in health in the US. And thirdly, the New Zealand health brand is quite strong in the US market as well.

Some of the major opportunities for Kiwi companies in the US market are things such as chronic disease management, health and ageing, health care transformation, underserved populations; those are all really key areas where I think Kiwis have some real opportunities and also some capability.

JAY SRINI: The health sector in the US is looking for multiple types of products. I would say that they're moving more into prevention, rather than the cure aspect. So products which look in terms of providing care to patients before they get sick, in terms of providing monitoring no matter where they are.

IT definitely is very, very much the centrepiece upon which all of the solutions for health care need to be built. It's very possible to provide solutions through human interventions, such that - for example, case management or coaching.

But to make them scalable and make them cost-effective on a large scale throughout the United States, they have to be virtualised. And part of that virtualisation exercise means providing those solutions and services through technology, through web-base, through cell phones, making the information digitised, providing that digitised information to caregivers, enabling them to coordinate.

And once you have digitised information, then you use technology to enable computer-assisted diagnosis, computer-assisted business intelligence, to layer itself on top of that technology.

The next level which I would say is consumers are getting very, very interested in is taking care of their health, because they're paying more for it. So there is a consumerism factor.

So transparency, cost comparisons, quality comparisons, technologies and solutions which enable customers to make rational decisions, as they would within airlines with Expedia; similar to that in health care has been also very effective.

The third, but not last, is a growing demographic population and solutions which enable our elderly to stay more at home and enable their caregivers to have peace of mind and be engaged in their health through personal health records and other technologies is another facet of growth in the US health sector.

HANS FRAUENLOB: The problems faced by New Zealand in terms of health care challenges are very common to the challenges that are faced in Europe and North America, so solutions that are developed here have a very, very good fit with the needs internationally.

JAY SRINI: This is a wonderful space for New Zealand companies to enter the US market, because it is not so much of moving goods like cars, or ships or boats, and therefore great distance may be an impediment; you're moving information, knowledge and know-how and when you're moving bits - distances and shipping costs are no longer a big factor, as an impediment.