According to a recent survey by Microsoft in Asia,  nearly 77% healthcare businesses  believe that they need to transform to a digital business to enable future growth and yet only 25% said that they have a full digital strategy in place today.

The Microsoft Asia Digital Transformation Study surveyed 1,494 business leaders from Asia Pacific working in organizations with more than 250 employees from 13 Asia Pacific markets: Australia, China, Hong Kong, S.A.R., China, Indonesia, India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, China and Thailand.

The study found that though majority of business leaders are aware of the urgent need to transform digitally to address the changing business climate, the transformation journey for most organizations in Asia Pacific is still at its infancy. In fact, only 25% of healthcare leaders indicated that they have a full digital transformation strategy in place, and 45% are in progress with specific digital transformation initiatives for selected parts of their organization. 30% still have very limited or no strategy in place, highlighted the report.

It further stated that Technology advancements compounded by on-going challenges faced by the healthcare industry, such as the evolving healthcare needs due to changing demographics, rise of chronic diseases, shortage of caregivers and cost of quality healthcare, is ushering societal and economic changes at an unprecedented pace.

Microsoft elaborated in its report that the 4 th Industrial Revolution  has the potential to be truly game-changing for the healthcare industry. Taken together, the potential for merging physical, digital and biological systems can enable the healthcare industry to achieve its aspirations.

Gabe Rijpma, Senior Director, Health and Social Services, Asia, Microsoft, said: "The Microsoft Asia Digital Transformation Study has shown that Asia Pacific’s healthcare industry has started to act on the need for digital transformation to address the challenges and opportunities of the 4 th Industrial Revolution in the region. However, healthcare providers are not acting fast enough in capitalizing the value of latent data to transform a reactive "sick care system" into a proactive one that manages individual and population health more effectively and at a lower cost. We urge all business leaders in this space to digitally transform themselves amidst changing demands externally and internally, to stay relevant."