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Theresa Tse, Chairwoman/Executive Director of Sino Biopharmaceutical Ltd, a listed company in Hong Kong (DING YING)
From fiction to reality
The development of optic, electronic and material science will have a significant influence on the healthcare industry, said Theresa Tse, Chairwoman/Executive Director of Sino Biopharmaceutical Ltd, a listed company in Hong Kong.
"To most people, healthcare may represent a group of cold-faced doctors wearing white robes and doing medical tests with droppers," said the young chairwoman, "Actually, the healthcare industry is filled with bold imagination."
She illustrated her point with two pictures: One is Arnold Schwarzenegger's broken robot face from the movie The Terminator, and the other is of "Baymax," an inflatable robot serving as a healthcare provider companion in the movie Big Hero 6.
"In the future, if people were to lose a part of their body, they may be expected to reinstall these parts as in The Terminator as long as their body does not reject the transplanted organs built with new materials and 3D printing," said Tse.
Tse also outlined a new concept for the future of personalized healthcare systems: Healthcare robots like "Baymax" will be able to take care of people all the time, and make healthcare plans based on their client's unique circumstances. They will also provide immediate treatment therapies for most diseases by analyzing blood from a prick of a patient's finger at their home.
"Cell therapy will enable the reversal of diseases," Bruce Novich, Division President, FUJIFILM North America Corporation, pointed out, explaining that the human body degenerates over time, and cells are lost to disease. Traditional drugs treat the disease symptoms, and do not reverse the disease course, replace the cells lost to disease, or repair the defect, but only slow the decline, said Novich. According to him, in the future, cell therapy may replace the damaged cells and offer a potential cure for a variety of diseases. For example, he said, burn victims can use their own cells for a skin graft by using skin produced through cell recreation procedures in the future. “The pain will be less. And the cost will be cheaper,” he stressed.
Novich also believed that the development of biological science will greatly push forward healthcare the industry. "In the future, we can create personal medical therapies depending on individual cells," he said.
The idea of individual therapy is not a new to China, due to their development of traditional Chinese medicine over thousands of years.
"The future personalized medical treatment sounds like the tradition Chinese medicine system," claimed Yan Kaijing, Chairman, from the Tasly Pharmaceutical Group Co Ltd. "Traditional Chinese medical prescriptions mostly are based on the health conditions of different patients."
Tasly, one of China's leading healthcare groups in the research and development, manufacturing, and distribution of pharmaceutical products, is also known for its herbal medicines and herbal extracts, as well as its chemical medicines, health products, and pharmaceutical substances.
"In the future, the healthcare industry will be a full combination of the traditional Chinese medical system, the modern medical system, genetics and cytology," Yan pointed out. If treatment will be able to be based on individuals and the modern medical industry, patients can be cured with very small amount of medicine instead of the use of current broad-spectrum medicines.
"Medical innovation, including drug innovation, together with scientific innovation are both basic to the healthcare industry," agreed Professor Lawton R. Burns, Director of the Wharton Center for Health Management & Economics, and Co-Director of the Roy & Diana Vagelos Program in Life Sciences and Management.
China's healthcare system in the future
Experts and entrepreneurs are confident that development of the healthcare industry will bring great changes in China in coming 20-30 years.
"We see a lot of the future in China," said Bruce Novich. In 2015-2016, China's pharmaceutical market saw a total sales volume of $155-165 billion, making it the second largest pharmaceutical market in the world. According to him, market size for regenerative medicine is expected to reach $380 billion globally by 2050, and China will be an important link in the value chain.
Partnerships between leading Chinese companies are a key ingredient to success, he said. Healthcare-related technologies are advancing rapidly in China, he said, adding that the population demographics and a country's commitment to cellular therapeutics also promise further development.
"Right now, China is a big medicine producer. With development of healthcare-related technology, it will be also a leading researcher in this industry," said Tse.
"Currently, the goal of healthcare still is to cure diseases," she said, "In the future, the will be to reduce the odds of getting diseases, slowing down or reversing any further development of diseases," said Tse.
In coming 20-30 years, Burns pointed out, China will experience a series of reforms in its healthcare system.
"China's healthcare system now is still a hospital-centered system," he specified, adding that pharmacies will cover bigger proportion of the system.
Yan Kaijing of Tasly agreed that significant changes of healthcare system will be seen in China. “We will witness an opportunity to redistribute the value chain in coming 10 years,” he said.
First of all, Yan noted, the consumption terminal of the healthcare system will change. China’s healthcare system currently is based on a hospital rating system, and better hospitals are in bigger cities. "This unbalanced distribution of medical resources is generally going to change."
Yan predicted that the payment method for China's healthcare system will be led by an increasing proportion of commercial medical insurance systems. Currently, commercial medical insurance only covers about 5-6 percent of China's medical insurance market share, while the rest is dominated by government-guided national medical insurance.
"This will not only be a reform of China’s healthcare system, but also herald a significant change in people's consumption habits and the redistribution of incomes," he said.
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