Obesity is the accumulation of fat in the body that can occur through genetic, hormonal, behavioral, and socioeconomic causes. Generally speaking, this disease happens when a person takes in more calories than what their body eliminates. These excess calories end up accumulating the body as fat.

This chronic illness manifests itself in varying degrees that are determined based on the patient’s body mass index:

• Type 1: moderate obesity
• Type 2: severe obesity
• Type 3: morbid obesity
• Type 4: extreme obesity

Cases have tripled over the past four decades, and the condition now affects more than 24% of people in the region, equivalent to over 100 million individuals, with obesity levels that amount to a serious problem of economic development and health, both physical and mental. Parallel to this, in recent years there has been a considerable increase in poverty that has led to increased malnutrition. What are the reasons for these events? How can there be an increase in obesity and malnutrition at the same time? 

First of all, it is worth mentioning that our food habits have changed radically. We see the effects of globalization on our plates in the form of highly processed, sugary foods that have brought us to the grave situation we are experiencing today. We need to gain awareness of what we eat, be concerned about our health, and learn to invest time and money in our diet.

In combination with the change to our diet, technology has taken over our lives. We spend an increasing amount of time looking at screens and a decreasing amount doing exercise.

Obesity is a pervasive problem in our society, and its root cause is the energy imbalance between calories consumed and spent, influenced by socioeconomic problems.

We are leaving a rather bleak outlook for the coming generations, and we have to act quickly, as this epidemiological disease has grown 400% in the last four decades. In addition, COVID-19 deepened this crisis: children and teenagers have been affected by school closures, not only keeping them out of spaces for leisure and physical activity, but also out of school meals programs. But the same has happened with adults, who had to shut themselves away in their homes for long periods, full of work and a lot of uncertainty, two variables that add to anxiety and do little to help those suffering from obesity.

A persistent, harmful problem

In one of our investigations in which we interviewed patients and professionals in the sector, we found that the average age of patients with class-2 obesity is 35 to 45, and most of them have been obese since they were young. Obese people generally do not see a doctor until they feel they have hit bottom, as most think that what happens to them is their own fault because of their lack of willpower, and that medicine cannot offer them a solution.

Obesity affects the patient’s self-esteem, physical and emotional well-being, social dynamics, and career, and is a gateway to other pathologies. In order to prevent it we need a healthy diet combined with regular daily exercise. People whose genetics make them unable to control the disease on their own have various types of bariatric surgery options that are highly effective for losing weight.

Recommendations for Maintaining a Healthful Diet

The WHO has conducted several investigations into this issue, and the FAO has looked at nutrition in detail. Both organizations found a common denominator in relation to a healthful diet.

The key is in:

• Limiting the amount of processed foods or foods high in energy density
• Doing daily physical activity
• Eating fruit and vegetables several times a day
• Cooking at home
• Getting enough sleep—at least 7 hours a day
• Controlling our weight

Another Slimming Option

In addition to a healthful diet, some years ago science and technology joined forces to help people suffering from this serious illness by creating medical devices to help with weight-loss diets. All these devices are fitted by specialists in gastroenterology and bariatric surgery.

Bariatric surgery includes a range of surgical procedures depending on the pathology of the patient, but in all cases its impact is to reduce the size of the stomach to produce satiety. It is currently one of the most recommended options for addressing class-2 obesity or higher. It also considerably improves the patient’s quality of life, as it brings about real changes in the digestive system, achieving weight loss as well as the ability to maintain it over time. The success of this kind of procedure is proven when it comes to weight loss, but it can also bring patients other benefits, including lowering glycemia, blood pressure, and cholesterol levels, as well as improving sleep quality (as it can reduce or eliminate sleep apnea entirely) and reducing of the workload placed on the heart.

The Four Types of Bariatric Surgery

• A gastric bypass consists of a stomach reduction, creating a small gastric bag that restricts the intake of food to small volumes.

• A gastric band consists in placing an adjustable silicone band around the upper part of the stomach, thereby limiting its capacity and causing a sensation of satiety in the patient.

• A gastric sleeve is a technique whereby surgeons reduce the volume of the stomach by 80%, leaving it in a tubular shape similar to that of a banana, and with a capacity of 80 milliliters.

• A biliopancreatic bypass is a mixed surgical technique that halves the size of the stomach and modifies the length of the small intestine in order to limit the amount of food that can be consumed and therefore absorbed.

The downside of this kind of surgery are the potential side effects, including injuries to the intestine or stomach, vomiting, constipation, and low blood-sugar levels. However, according to our research, patients themselves see more positive aspects than negative ones, as their quality of life is infinitely better after the operations.

Next Steps

Contact us if you are interested in finding out more about the various hospitals that perform bariatric surgery in Latin America, the number of bariatric procedures performed, the equipment and models used, etc. We can design and conduct a personalized market survey that will provide all these data and more in order to help give you a better understanding of the opportunities for your business.

In this second installment, we will be looking at digitalization in health and the new role of the patient, both of which are topics tied to the digital transformation the sector has been experiencing, but which the pandemic has made us rethink. 

LESSON 1: DIGITALIZATION IN HEALTH IS HERE TO STAY

The changes and the digital transformation that the industry has been through have been accelerated by the pandemic: virtual health care; patient follow-up through apps; deals struck in meetings on Google Meet or Zoom; trainings for physicians on how to use devices through virtual-reality sessions; the list goes on. However, despite having advanced a great deal in the way patients receive treatment and the way the health system helps keep everything running, there is still much to be done.

In one of our studies conducted through HospiScope, we classified telehealth (TH) into four main categories: participation in TH when the hospital has a telehealth program; TH centers when there is a center with specialists that the hospitals connect to, such as centers of excellence in other disciplines; medical monitoring (spoke TH), when the hospital has a system connected to the service provided by the TH center at which the specialists are located; and international TH, when the hospital takes part in international TH.

In HospiScope we have extensive data about equipment and technology for almost 90% of hospitals in Latin America, so our figures should be fairly representative of the resources available in the region.

According to our analysis, approximately:

• 15% of hospitals in Latin America have a telehealth (TH) program

• 9% of hospitals in Latin America are connected to a TH center

• 6% of hospitals in Latin America provide that service to patients through a system of medical monitoring

• 1% of hospitals in Latin America form part of international TH

These data remained stable between 2020 and 2021. There is clearly a big opportunity in this segment. In line with our analysis, Meet Technology Review has conducted a survey in which 95% of those interviewed say that telehealth is a fundamental element to take into account in the transformation.

Health and technology have been working together for some time, but the need to speed up these processes in order to expand access to health has led to the automation of tasks, which meant that human involvement could be used in cases where it is necessary. So, for example, apps have been created to provide monitoring on patients with non–life threatening illnesses, and improvements have been seen in user experiences with regard to chronic patient monitoring and hospital appointment systems. This in turn meant that health-care personnel, nurses and doctors, would provide their time and knowledge to those who really needed it.

Another of the opportunities we have identified in the health digitalization process is the use of analytics (data analysis), key to information-based decision making, which in many cases is generated by the patients themselves.  However, we still have a long way to go: for example, according to data from Global Health Intelligence (GHI), 36% of health companies in Latin America already have some kind of strategy for prevention and vigilance, while the other 64% are still at the initial stages of developing this strategy.

We have a great window of opportunities before us for technology companies to start out on a pathway we have already seen in several sectors. Xsensio has developed a device for monitoring athletes’ sweat and detecting potential health problems, while HEMOTUNE promises to regenerate blood to prevent the death of patients from infections and intoxication. Despite these advances, as we mentioned in the first article in this series, to achieve an effective health system in the long term, the focus of attention must be on preventive diagnosis and a primary-care strategy. In addition to heavy investment in development, data are key when it comes to knowing where to make investments.

At GHI we believe there are great opportunities, as health digitalization is one of the most important links in the chain moving forward, and the transformation should not become a missed opportunity. However, our data unfortunately show that, for many organizations, TH has just been a band-aid that has helped at a difficult time, rather than an opportunity to bring about real change. Time will tell why a qualitative leap could not be achieved, but at a glance it appears that it could be down to our cultural habits. 

LESSON 2: THE PATIENT IS NO LONGER A SPECTATOR AND NOW PLAYS A LEADING ROLE IN THEIR OWN MEDICAL HISTORY

The patient has taken on an active role, both in their diagnosis and their treatment, and their empowerment forces us to change our communication strategy. The ways in which organizations and physicians relate to patients are completely different than what we were used to.

Today, it is easy to google a symptom and draw conclusions about it—as an enormous number of people do—but the misuse of tools can lead to a number of problems. Are we ready to assume this change?  Is the excess of information positive or negative? 

Integrating the technology and the patient into health systems speeds up the clinical investigation process, achieving greater efficiency and increasing the development of medical devices and drugs that cover unmet needs. On the other hand, along with technology we are seeing the rise of medfluencers (social influencers concerned with medical topics), a new channel in which different health professionals share their knowledge through the various social networks.

At GHI, we have found that most multinational health companies have patient-education programs and campaigns ranging from fundamental topics like obesity to more technical questions such as laparoscopic procedures. These programs tend to be long-term, as their main goal is to change habits, and none of them are carried out in isolation. People in the industry talk about the 5 Ps: Patient, Physician, Purchase Manager, Payer, and Policymaker. The most successful patient-education programs look for points of contact with each of these players.

For a long time, the patient was not part of the conversation about their own health, and one of the main challenges today is for doctors, who feel they have power over the health of their patients and do not want to let go of it, to release medical histories and allow the digitalization of medical files.

Patients nowadays want to have a bigger role within the health sector, not only to give their opinion about their own condition, but also to help and protect those who are newly diagnosed.  In this context they have set up groups to share experiences and lessons learned, generating a space for positive exchange that challenges traditional medical care. 

We are clearly at a pivotal moment with respect to the health sector that has never been so exposed. The industry needs new standards, and technology can provide that leap of quality and integration that is required by putting the patient center stage and reinforcing ethical considerations. 

Next Steps

Contact us if you are interested in exploring further how these lessons are being applied, perhaps through a personalized study that will help you outline new strategies for your business or create new initiatives. We can also provide you with subscriptions to our data services, such as HospiScope, SurgiScope, LatAm Hospital Monitoring, and others.

TM has been a topic of debate in the big international health forums since 2003, and some large strides have been made since those opening conversations. However, data show that we still have a huge opportunity to develop this sector of the industry that will form part of primary health care in the near future. To point to one successful case, according to a report by the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), Brazil’s Telessaúde Brasil program, whose goal is to offer primary health-care professionals a second opinion, using electronic consultations or electronic referrals, has demonstrated that one out of two patients offered electronic consultations does not get referred to other services. Its reports show that, on average, 60% of electronic consultations led to a change in the originally planned approach, thereby reducing costs, especially with treatment outside the home, resulting in a higher case-resolution rate.

Since 2015, at Global Health Intelligence (GHI) we have been using our proprietary HospiScope database, which gathers information about the installed base equipment in hospitals in 17 Latin American countries. HospiScope has allowed us to do a variety of analyses on the development of demographic indicators, hospital equipment, beds, clinical specialties, medical personnel, information systems, type of care, and other key areas. As a result of the pandemic, we began gathering data on TM, which we have sorted into four main categories:

1. Participation in TM, when the hospital has a telemedicine program
2. A TM center, when there is a dedicated center with specialists to which the hospitals can connect, such as centers of excellence in other fields
3. Medical monitoring (spoke TM), when the hospital has a system connected to the service provided by the TM center where the specialists are located
4. International TM, when the hospital is involved in international TM

Our analysis, which is based on the strategic data we have gathered over the years, was based on data from hospitals in 17 Latin American countries that was compiled between 2018 and 2021.

Roughly 15% of the hospitals included in our analysis have a TM program; 9% are connected to a TM center; just 6% provide that service to patients through a medical monitoring system, and 1% are part of international TM. These data remained stable between 2020 and 2021.

Analyzing the data from hospitals with a TM program, the percentage of these relative to the total amount of hospitals in the region varies between 11% and 19%, leaving a large opportunity for the development of this service. Zooming in on the most relevant data, Colombia has the most development in the service, while Chile is the only country to have made a strategic investment in infrastructure, installed capacity, and specialist telehealth personnel, distinguishing itself from the other countries in the region.

In terms of connectedness to TM centers, 38% of hospitals have this service in Colombia. However, Argentina, which comes next in the ranking, has just a 9% share, showing that there is significant opportunity for investment in this service too. The situation is similar for medical monitoring. In Colombia, 65% of hospitals have the service, followed by Chile with just 9%, then Argentina, Mexico and others, respectively with 3%.

Lastly, we see significant opportunity in terms of international TM, where the total percentage share among hospitals is 1%. Colombia leads the region in this category with 8% penetration, followed by Chile at 1%, and Argentina and Mexico, with 0%, respectively.

TM is a service that is here to stay, and the data show there is a development opportunity, in terms of both infrastructure and service, that needs attention.

Contact us to find out more how our team can conduct a market study for the Latin American country of your choice so you can gain a greater understanding of telemedicine penetration and where the strongest opportunities lie.

Our goal is to capture what is happening in the healthcare market in Brazil and share these updates with our audience. Currently, our team already is in regular contact with thousands of hospitals as we update information for our HospiScope database and offer new data for our Latin America Hospital Monitoring service.

What we’ve done is take advantage of that regular contact to produce this new resource for our readers. In this issue for Brazil, we cover topics like:

• Data on COVID deaths and vaccination levels
• Herd immunization expectation for Brazil
• Forecast for when elective surgical procedures will return to normal levels in Brazil
• The top 3 preferred brands for various surgical specialties in Brazil
• As Brazilian hospitals shift budget allocations away from COVID and ICU care, these are the areas they are focused on
• When historic purchasing patterns for medical devices used in various procedures will resume in Brazil’s larger hospitals

And much more.

Click here to download the report.

Deepen Your Insights

Subscribing to the Latin America Hospital Monitoring service allows you to access much more data than in this brief report, and it’s updated monthly. You access it using a Power BI platform with simple, efficient data displays. Click here to find out more about how you can subscribe to the Latin America Hospital Monitoring service.

Our goal is to capture what is happening in the medical equipment market in Brazil and share these updates with our audience. Currently, our team already is in regular contact with thousands of hospitals as we update information for our HospiScope database and offer new data for our Latin America Hospital Monitoring service.

What we’ve done is take advantage of that regular contact to produce this new resource for our readers. In this issue for Brazil, we cover topics like:

• Data on COVID deaths and vaccination levels
• Herd immunization expectation for Brazil
• Projected increases in capital expenditure budgets
• When procedure volumes will return to pre-COVID levels in Brazilian hospitals
• Trends in demand for consumables and in product prices

And much more.

Click here to download the report.

Deepen Your Insights
Subscribing to the Latin America Hospital Monitoring service allows you to access much more data than in this brief report, and it’s updated monthly. You access it using a Power BI platform with simple, efficient data displays. Click here to find out more about how you can subscribe to the Latin America Hospital Monitoring service.

As such, over the past 18 months telemedicine grew at a level that otherwise would have taken it 10 years to achieve, becoming an impressive breakthrough that has positively impacted the lives of patients and doctors. However, there are still significant challenges directly related to technological access and, above all, connectivity, which are crucial to make this service universal. In Mexico, while it’s true that telemedicine service is driven not just by the government (via the Health Secretariat) but also by the National Center for Technological Excellence in Health (or CENETEC, as per its Spanish-language acronym), overall, telemedicine is still taking its first steps in the country. The keys to telemedicine working effectively are data accessibility and the ability to offer quality service regardless of where the doctor and patient are located.

This involves having a very robust IT system and security features that will protect the data of the patient, the doctor and the institution, i.e., the clinic or hospital, yet still allow for the retrieval of necessary information when appointments and follow-up treatments take place. When it comes to managing medical histories of patients, data access should be provided in a comprehensive way to make it easy for both the doctor and the patient to access the information.

The use of electronic prescriptions, which is still not very well developed in Mexico and offers great potential, is another of the advances that have been spreading across Latin America. The use of digital support for these types of documents, given their legal importance, is exponentially speeding up the connections between pharmacies and doctors, which in turn provides the patient with a fast solution that takes only minutes. This is particularly important in cases in which the participants (doctors and patients) are located in different areas.

Given that Mexico is a large country with a big population and limited professional resources, IT infrastructure offers a beneficial opportunity and, along with telemedicine, can deliver a solution for the lack of available treatment in different areas around the country. While primary care has grown, there has also been an increase of more than 8% in the use of short-stay beds—and huge jump considering that historically, short-stay bed use has only grown by 1-2% per year. This phenomenon is a clear lesson—courtesy of COVID-19—with regard the medical interaction between patients and the institutions.

During the peak infection periods of the pandemic, patients in Mexico decided to reduce doctor visits, partially out of fear and partially due to recommendations by health authorities. This has led them to have a different relationship with healthcare and treat the highly urgent matters in the moment they need to be treated. Today, healthcare and timely diagnoses are driving a reduction in the misuse of beds for elective procedures, allowing more space for necessary procedures. In addition, there has also been an increase in robotic surgery for minimally invasive surgeries, which considerably reduce recovery time for patients and, in turn, shorten their hospital/clinic stays.

The effects of the pandemic have been devastating economically, educationally, politically and emotionally. We have had to reinvent ourselves and work around adversity to come out ahead. Latin American countries have been among the hardest hit in the world by COVID and we still have much work to do in order to fully recover. However, we’ve learned important lessons that have forged the way for implementing technology in places where it would have been unthinkable a few months back. Healthcare and education were the sectors that were most transformed by the effects of the pandemic, and we should treat this transformation as the tip of the iceberg. Moreover, healthcare in particular is a topic that is being discussed in several international forums, such as the Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO); last month Carissa F. Etienne, the PAHO’s director, brought to light the urgency of the need to invest in strengthening healthcare systems and in the production of healthcare technologies. Etienne emphasized LAC’s need to become self-sufficient in this area.

We’re now at a tipping point that requires active participation from all the involved healthcare stakeholders to drive development in the region. There is a new way of doing things that is here to stay and it’s necessary for business to organically complement these new ways of doing things by educating professionals, offering universe access to basic healthcare services and, above all, by investing in technology.

That is why we at Global Health Intelligence continually drive the development and implementation of new technologies through our communications channels, which we use to share reports and points of view regarding the technological transformation that is emerging throughout the region. We also strive to work with companies that invest in cutting-edge technology that connect data with the stakeholders that make decisions in Latin America’s healthcare market. Since 2014 our commitment has allowed us to establish different partnerships with key players to generate valuable information to help with decision making.

Our goal is to capture what is happening in Latin American hospitals and share these updates with our audience. Currently, our team already is in regular contact with thousands of hospitals as we update information for our HospiScope database and offer new data for our Latin America Hospital Monitoring service.

What we’ve done is take advantage of that regular contact to produce this new resource for our readers. In this issue for Colombia, we cover topics like:

• Current levels of non-emergency surgeries and procedure volumes in Colombia, compared to historic averages
• When surgeons expect a return to a full schedule of surgeries
• Levels of medical devices purchases in Colombia
• Forecasts for when demand will return
• The effects of the pandemic on diabetes treatments

And much more.

Click here to download the report.

Deepen Your Insights
Subscribing to the Latin America Hospital Monitoring service allows you to access much more data than in this brief report, and it’s updated monthly. You access it using a Power BI platform with simple, efficient data displays. Click here to find out more about how you can subscribe to the Latin America Hospital Monitoring service.

Our patient care report, which you can find by clicking here, covers issues related to treatment.

However, the report below is for the medical market and designed to help medical equipment/devices professionals obtain up-to-the-moment market intelligence for different markets in Latin America.

Currently, our team already is in regular contact with thousands of hospitals as we update information for our HospiScope database and offer new data for our Latin America Hospital Monitoring service.

What we’ve done is take advantage of that regular contact to produce this new resource for our readers. In this issue for Colombia, we cover topics like:

• The 2 types of medical equipment that have grown the most thus far in 2021
• When hospitals in Colombia expect to regain their normal procedure volume
• Data on price increases for ventilators and personal protective equipment during the pandemic in Colombia—and when professionals expect these prices to return to normal
• Market leaders in Colombia for neurology, diabetes care, cardiovascular equipment, ventilators and other categories

And much more.

Click on the image below to download the report.

Deepen Your Insights

Subscribing to the Latin America Hospital Monitoring service allows you to access much more data than in this brief report, and it’s updated weekly. You access it using a Power BI platform with simple, efficient data displays. Click here to find out more about how you can subscribe to the Latin America Hospital Monitoring service.

Our goal is to capture what is happening in Latin American hospitals and share these updates with our audience. Currently, our team already is in regular contact with thousands of hospitals as we update information for our HospiScope database and offer new data for our Latin America Hospital Monitoring service.

What we’ve done is take advantage of that regular contact to produce this new resource for our readers. In this issue for Colombia, we cover topics like:

• Diabetes patient volumes
• Shifts in costs of surgeries in Colombia due to greater demand and lack of medical devices
• Changes in the amounts of cardiovascular and cardiology procedures in Colombia
• The effect of COVID vaccinations on the timetable for procedure volumes to return to pre-pandemic levels

And much more.

Click on the image below to download the report.

Deepen Your Insights

Subscribing to the Latin America Hospital Monitoring service allows you to access much more data than in this brief report, and it’s updated weekly. You access it using a Power BI platform with simple, efficient data displays. Click here to find out more about how you can subscribe to the Latin America Hospital Monitoring service.

Our goal is to capture what is happening in Latin American hospitals and share these updates with our audience. Currently, our team already is in regular contact with thousands of hospitals as we update information for our HospiScope database and offer new data for our Latin America Hospital Monitoring service.

What we’ve done is take advantage of that regular contact to produce this new resource for our readers. In this issue for Brazil, we cover topics like:

• Change in non-emergency procedure volumes in Brazil in 2021
• New patient screening measures in place in Brazil
• Shifts in cardiovascular surgeries in Brazil in 2021
• When Brazilian hospitals expect procedure volumes to return to pre-COVID levels

And much more.

Click on the image below to download the report.

Deepen Your Insights

Subscribing to the Latin America Hospital Monitoring service allows you to access much more data than in this brief report, and it’s updated weekly. You access it using a Power BI platform with simple, efficient data displays. Click here to find out more about how you can subscribe to the Latin America Hospital Monitoring service.