The Health Bank (THB) Global, headquartered in Singapore, offers excellence in healthcare services using technology and a uniquely tailored approach to whole-person care. Our mission is to empower our members to live better and healthier lives through tech-enabled, personalized care management.
THB offers home care and remote health management, including chronic disease management, by combining excellence of service and innovation in care to provide scalable and affordable solutions while maintaining extremely high healthcare delivery standards. This would increase the outreach and help humanity while reducing the healthcare burden on governments and the healthcare system wherever we go. We need to invest our time in serving humanity without harming the environment. THB was created as a response to the global need of the hour, especially in the developing world, including South Asia, the Middle East, and East Asia. Our focus on a proactive approach to care includes general Health Management, specializing in chronic care – focusing on those facing diabetes, hypertension, and COPD.
As the medical community responds to COVID-19 on a global scale, it is becoming increasingly clear that non-invasive ventilation is critical for patient care in hospitals and at home. THB has spent the better part of 2020 procuring solutions for the lack of resources and the hefty cost associated with invasive ventilation to meet this need. As a result, THB has partnered with the US-based companies Subsalve and Nanotronics Health, LLC, to bring Non-Invasive Ventilation to the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia (MENASA) region.
A study on the effectiveness of non-invasive ventilation via helmet versus face mask at the University of Chicago shows that the intubation rate was 61.5% for the face mask group and 18.2% for the helmet group; the effectiveness of non-invasive ventilation hoods in reducing the requirement for invasive intubation. This solution will help many facilities and countries support their patients in need, with minimal risk and reduced financial impact.
Another growing challenge we have seen is timely access to care in a convenient and risk-free environment. Our Telehealth and Remote Monitoring solutions enable our members to access virtual healthcare by bringing all necessary services to them. We offer remote access to Health Management, collection and digitization of health records, doctor consultations online or over the phone, second opinions from international facilities, and virtual access to nutritionists and physiotherapists. Especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, our virtual offerings save clients from unnecessary hospital visits and exposure to the virus and risk. Through our digital platform and technologies, we are able to manage, monitor and coordinate care for our members remotely, leading to better health outcomes.
Additionally, our Virtual Hospital offers home care services by professionally trained clinical teams under senior medical staff’s supervision, physically and through remote monitoring. We offer our chronic and acute patients’ hospital-grade care in the comfort of their homes.
We follow the principles of Precision Medicine – the practice of proactive and personalized approach to health care, considering individual variability in genetics, environmental and lifestyle factors. With a strong focus on prevention and wellness, we empower our members to be proactive about attaining and maintaining a healthy lifestyle while preventing illness and disease through our Lifestyle and Chronic Disease Management programs. Our solutions encompass preventing diabetes where possible and providing efficient diabetes and hypertension management.
Across all our services, we offer the value of Continuity of Care, which we believe is the essence of good patient care, which shouldn’t be interrupted wherever and whenever receiving care. This connectivity of services ensures comprehensive and holistic support.
We take a proactive approach with our clients as well as with our company and team. Before the lockdown was officially announced, we had identified the need to be cautious right away. We implemented digital working solutions immediately, facilitate remote working, and enforce work from home for our team – 2 weeks ahead of the official lockdown. We continue to take precautionary steps to ensure our staff and colleagues’ physical health and mental well-being. Our values must mirror our actions and we have taken every possible precaution to ensure we can reach the maximum level of patients served while protecting our team.
We ensured PPE’s were made available to all our team and had implemented a business continuity plan. Because we are in the healthcare industry, our frontline workers’ safety is of the utmost importance to us. We ensure to minimize any risk and manage a robust protocol, following the global guidelines and the government’s guidelines to ensure the protection of our staff throughout. We also offered antibody and PCR testing to our team staff and patients wherever needed.
Our company’s future is to be a leader in managing chronic diseases, helping individuals achieve long and healthy lives for those susceptible or at risk of getting these diseases – which could be due to genetics or lifestyle. If we have members who have certain risk factors and family history, we know the risk they face, and we can manage them in the early stages. For example, if a member is diagnosed with diabetes, we would manage their care and work closely to prevent the disease’s progression as much as possible. Chronic disease is on the rise and impacting the overall health of individuals while increasing the cost of care – the number of those with diabetes is expected to almost double to 108 million by 2045 in the MENA region.
Using technology and connected devices, we achieve remarkable data-driven outcomes and increased and quantifiable patient engagement. Personal health coaching and AI enables THB to send real-time, actionable, personalized alerts and recommendations based on data received from connected devices. We have developed and registered a one-of-a-kind rating system that is geared to improve health outcomes while reducing the cost of care for individuals, governments and insurance companies.
We have found that particularly in times of crisis, people flock to quality when it comes to one’s health. In the global scenario that we are facing, we find that people are even less likely to compromise on quality and are taking this opportunity to approach their health proactively. This in turn allows them to think about how they can minimize any potential risk – instead of the previous mindset of treating symptoms once they are visible. As Benjamin Franklin famously said, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”
Since the inception of our company we have been advocating to empower our members while also highlighting the importance of managed care. There is growing acknowledgement and acceptance that Health Management is a vital element of the care journey throughout one’s lifetime. We follow the principles of Kaizen – which is the Japanese business philosophy of continuous improvement. The Kaizen approach of continuous improvement is actively implemented across all we do, including new and existing projects, expansion plans and value-offerings, enhancing the level of quality and efficiency we deliver continuously.
