Switzerland could save 8.2 billion francs by digitising healthcare

Three main areas of savings

The 8.2 billion francs in savings, which represents 11.8 percent of total 2019 healthcare expenditures, would be in the areas of patient-oriented digital health solutions (49 percent), provider- and payer-oriented e-health solutions (33 percent), and enabler technologies (18 percent). Patient-oriented solutions include those that directly involve patients in health management activity, such as online interactions, patient self-care, and self-services, all of which would free up time for both doctors and patients and lead to more cost-effective treatment. Provider- and payer-oriented solutions would decrease time spent on administrative tasks and, by improving outcomes through augmented medical decision-making, reduce the need for downstream treatment. Enabler technologies include unified electronic health records, improved data exchange and e-prescriptions.

The McKinsey/ETH study was authored by six experts from McKinsey and Professors Elgar Fleisch and Florian von Wangenheim of D-MTEC. Professor Fleisch notes that “The digitization of healthcare is a global evolutionary step that we cannot escape. Rather, we should actively shape it for the benefit of society as a whole, including Switzerland as a business and research location.”

Switzerland lagging behind other countries

Despite Switzerland’s excellent healthcare system, it lags behind many of its neighbours in terms of healthcare digitisation. In a 2018 Bertelsmann Foundation survey, Switzerland ranked 14 of 17 countries studied. This is despite the fact that it fulfils many of the requirements for digitisation: high coverage with broadband internet, a digitally literate population, and some 900 healthcare start-ups working on digital therapeutics, blockchain-based data exchange solutions, and process digitisation. Nevertheless, according to Professor von Wangenheim, doctors’ practices often lack the infrastructure and training to effectively analyse the data that could be at their disposal.

ETH jumps in

ETH researchers help develop systems to address precisely this lack: a kind of digital cockpit for doctors. Treatment-relevant parameters appear as tiles on a screen, allowing doctors to identify when a patient needs to be seen in person, saving both patients and doctors unnecessary office visits and yet allowing crucial issues to be identified in a timely fashion. This could help further shift the Swiss healthcare system from a focus on acute care to the management of chronic conditions.

The effects of the pandemic

Ironically, the Covid-19 pandemic led to movement in the right direction: telemedicine, one of the big money savers offered by digitisation, increased dramatically as personal contact was minimised. At the start of the pandemic, for example, psychotherapy by video conference was authorised. Precisely this step forward was revoked in the summer of 2021, however.