Integrated health care systems in Asia: an urgent necessity.

A rapidly aging population along with the increasing burden of patients with chronic conditions in Asia requires efficient health systems with integrated care. Although some efforts to integrate primary care and hospital care in Asia are underway, overall care delivery remains fragmented and diverse, eg, in terms of medical electronic record sharing and availability, patient registries, and empowerment of primary health care providers to handle chronic illnesses. The primary care sector requires more robust and effective initiatives targeted at specific diseases, particularly chronic conditions such as diabetes, hypertension, depression, and dementia. This can be achieved through integrated care - a health care model of collaborative care provision. For successful implementation of integrated care policy, key stakeholders need a thorough understanding of the high-risk patient population and relevant resources to tackle the imminent population demographic shift due to the extremely rapid rate of increase in the aging population in Asia.
Competing Interests: Disclosure This paper was compiled based on discussions during an advisory board meeting on “Integrated Care Health Systems for Individualized Patient Care in Asia” held in Singapore on June 2, 2018, attended by the co-authors and sponsored by Pfizer. None of the authors received any honorarium for the preparation of the article. Dr Vicknesh Welluppillai is an employee of Pfizer. Dr Sajita Setia was an employee of Pfizer at the time the advisory board meeting took place. Ms Thuy Linh Tran underwent indirect patient care pharmacy training for 3 months at Pfizer, Singapore. This publication contains personal views and opinions of authors and no inference should be derived related to their current or previous employers. The authors report no other conflicts of interest in this work.