To fill this gap, Global Health Intelligence (GHI) decided to delve into its database (which covers 86% of all hospitals in Latin America and now includes Bolivia, Uruguay and Paraguay) to analyze which hospitals have the highest equipment counts in 4 specific categories:

• Patient care (number of beds)
• Diagnostic imaging equipment
• Cardiovascular equipment
• Maternity unit equipment

These four categories are critical pillars when evaluating patient care. The number of beds within an institution is often an indicator of the size of the hospital and may be correlated to the level of care. Diagnostic imaging equipment is essential to properly diagnose any number of life-threatening and chronic conditions. Cardiovascular equipment is just as important given the prevalence of heart disease in Latin America. A majority of births take place in hospitals and birthing is one of the main activities of most hospitals, which denotes significant importance to maternity units and infant care. While additional categories could have been included, GHI decided to focus on these 4 areas of care in order make the ranking more manageable.

Why Multiple Categories and Countries?

Rankings are often all-encompassing with no specific focus, such as the “The 50 best hospitals.” Given the complexities of healthcare systems in place and the context in which they operate, GHI opted to acknowledge these characteristics by creating a ranking per leading category. This also enables smaller yet more specialized hospitals to form part of the ranking.

GHI applied the same plurality by setting up the rankings per country in order to reflect local market dynamics accurately. For example, Brazil has over 200 million people and over 7,000 hospitals. It would be an unjust comparison to include Brazilian hospitals alongside those of Peru, for instance, a market that’s 10 times smaller.

Rankings for the Best Equipped Hospitals

The best-equipped hospitals in Argentina
The best-equipped hospitals in Brazil
The best-equipped hospitals in Chile
The best-equipped hospitals in Colombia
The best-equipped hospitals in Dominican Republic
The best-equipped hospitals in Mexico
The best-equipped hospitals in Peru
The best-equipped hospitals in Puerto Rico

Dive Deeper

This GHI ranking will give you an initial sense of which Latin American hospitals are best-equipped. But that’s just a surface view. It takes a deeper dive into the data to understand which market segments have the best potential to drive your revenues.

You can get this deep dive by subscribing to our database , which quickly lets you use data visualization tools to see which hospitals have the biggest needs and what those needs are. Parsing that is what will uncover opportunities for your sales team and allow you to grow your revenues in different markets. Check out this video to understand how the database can help drive new and existing revenue streams. Then contact GHI directly for an even deeper sense of how our database can be the perfect tool for your sales team.

The report requested the government to consider the policies for allowing better distribution of professionals in locations deprived of specialists. Two migratory waves were observed in Uruguay; one during the dictatorship and the other during the economic crisis in 2002. However, the situation seems to have reversed with very few doctors migrating to other countries in search of better working conditions.

According to the Medical Union there is zero unemployment in the sector, yet 7% and 10% of Uruguayan doctors work abroad. The majority travel to Spain (51.7%) followed by Chile (24.4%). With the reversal of situation, doctors from other nations are moving to Uruguay for work, especially from Venezuela, Cuba and Pakistan.

The drug is a success after 18 years of research and 25 countries, including Brazil, Mexico and Uruguay have shown interest in obtaining a manufacturing license. Scientists mentioned that the vaccine does not prevent lung cancer and is a complement to the current therapies such as chemotherapy or radiotherapy.

The vaccine acts as a therapeutic agent and works by strengthening patient’s immune system. It is an antibody that mimics the tumor’s antigens making the immune system work and act against the tumor, without affecting healthy cells. Vaxira can be used on lung cancer patients after the radio and chemotherapy sessions have been completed as per treatment protocol.

Lung cancer is one of the most deadly diseases which is generally goes undiagnosed till the later stages. 90% of patients do not survive more than five years. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), lung cancer kills around 1.38 million people annually across the globe and ~9,000 people in Argentina. Vaxira has been developed by a consortium of private and public sector, Argentina and Cuba.

At the Conference, the medical device associations created a document implementing medtech codes of ethics for governing the medical technology market, including responsibility to people’s lives and health, integrity, independence, transparency, sincere interest, and accountability.

The formally launched document by the inter-American coalition on ethical business practices in the medical technology sector promises to have good organizational practices and not to misuse the resources. The medical technology sectors of respective countries aim to increase access and coverage along with decreasing expenses and improving service delivery to patients.

An annual review of the established principles will be organized to verify that the signatory countries comply with the policies. The “Bogotá Principles” set by the inter-American coalition’s is an expansion of “Kuala Lumpur Principles” signed in by Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) economies’ respective medical technology sectors for implementing the voluntary codes of ethics.

This initiative aims to highlight the importance high-standard ethical business practices among medical technology manufacturers, distributors, and health care professionals. According to Secretary for Transparency of Columbia, Camilo Enciso, ” Episodes that have known to the public recently, are marking the need to move faster to prevent acts of corruption in a forceful way, training officials, generating channels of denunciation, modernizing codes of ethics and working on self-regulation pacts.”

• Number of hospitals: 7,878
• Number of hospital beds per hospital (average): 24
• Operating rooms per hospital (average): 2.0

Penetration of:

• Ventilators: 610%
• Infusion pumps: 2041%
• MRI: 7%
• PET: <1%
• Ultrasound: 124%

Download the complete report for more information or explore our Latin American hospitals database, the world’s largest, covering 86% of the hospitals in Latin America with 130+ data points per hospital.

Latin America home healthcare market, by geography is segmented as Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Argentina and others. Brazil contributed for the largest share, i.e. around 35%, in 2013 of the Latin America home healthcare market. Increasing healthcare awareness and rising healthcare expenditure on chronic diseases in Brazil drive the market of home healthcare in Brazil. Mexico contributed the second largest share i.e. over 25% of the total market in 2013 and is expected to witness fastest growth during the study period. High prevalence of diabetes and cardiovascular diseases and increasing healthcare investment by the Government of Mexico will support the growth of home healthcare in Mexico. The growth of home healthcare market in Argentina and Colombia is mainly attributed to the introduction of new technologies coupled with new product launch by key companies. Some of the prominent players in the Latin America home healthcare market are Omron Healthcare, Phillips Healthcare, Medtronic, F. Hoffmann-La Roche, Praxair Technologies, Teleflex Corporation, Bayer Healthcare, ResMed, GE Healthcare, Cardinal Health, Gentiva Health Services, Invacare Corporation, Johnson & Johnson, Abbott Laboratories and others.