Jelf International's Doug Rice on his top predictions for international private medical insurance (IPMI) during 2016.
1. I expect to see spending growth of between 5 and 7% during 2016.
This is driven largely driven by emerging market expansion, ageing populations (a growing challenge for long-term ex-pats) and treatment and technology advances.
Spending growth will be much above this 5-7% rate in some regions as, while technological advancements tend to be offered as a longer-term cost-saving measure, in reality the initial outlay is often inflated.
I predict these contradictory forces will be most at play in the Gulf and Far East regions and so rapid spending growth is quite likely here.
2. In Argentina, Thailand and China, now in its post single-child era, I anticipate increases in healthcare spending to outstrip inflation.
The key issues in these areas will continue to be regulation & compliance and the transformation to digital (specifically mobile health) and telemedicine.
This will shape international healthcare further in developing countries where the delivery of traditional healthcare either via public healthcare or established routes is not so readily available.
The emergence of technology enables real-time consultations with doctors and even diagnoses via smartphones and tablets. In an age when doctor/patient time is increasingly squeezed, technology opens the door to rebuilding this relationship.
3. The Affordable Care Act enablement in the US will continue to have ripple effectsglobally in terms of consolidation not only amongst insurers but also advisers and intermediaries too, in order to promote economies of scale.
This will have an effect on global healthcare over time and will also drive the need to engage further with technological advances in healthcare delivery.
Consolidation of so many conglomerates means that mass client data is now controlled by the few. This makes analytics much more powerful as organisations are able to predict trends in illness and disease. This will ultimately bring huge advances in patient care and outcome.
4. Unsustainable rising costs are driving the need for innovation and advances in technology and health data and so the increase of wearables and health apps are ideal bedfellows in meeting the global healthcare challenges.
Wearable technology will also transform to be more of an analytics and diagnostics tool to assist prevention.
5. Clients may have had to swallow hikes in previous years but this can't go on.
As international healthcare becomes less affordable it becomes more of a cost and less of a benefit so employers will look at alternative ways to manage their budget.
There will be an emergence of higher co-payment schemes, larger deductibles and excesses, and improved risk management to support a growing cost-conscious consumer and employer.
6. The ageing population puts a strain on healthcare and makes it more expensive, so there will be an increasing emphasis on collecting good data to improve prevention.
This demographic will need to be better engaged, and as they become increasingly tech-savvy they will also make more use of wearables to both assess and improve their health and wellbeing.
The future is very bright for those involved in global healthcare and in particularly the consumer who is likely to be a very major beneficiary in the short term due to the mobile health revolution of which we're on the cusp.
Doug Rice is managing director of Jelf International
