“Glocalization” is the buzzword in the modern day global health care industry. For starters, Glocalization, a combination of words “globalization” and “localization,” implies to the trend of adaptation of global healthcare services or products to accommodate the ethos and aspirations of people dwelling in a particular locale.
The essence of the concept is that large consumer companies customize their products and services to meet local tastes, offering themselves and the local consumer with a win-win situation. However, the medical care is generally delivered locally, but the issues in the healthcare industry are global. The majority of challenges in healthcare industry have universal implications and hence a collective effort on part of all nations is the need of the hour.
Escalating medical care costs
The global health care industry is struggling to come to terms with the escalating costs of medical care. According to an estimate by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), global health care spending is 10.5 percent of the total Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2014, which remains unchanged since the previous 2 years. The EIU report further revealed that the regional percentage of spending is about 17.4 percent in North America while it is about 10.7 percent in Western Europe.
The Latin American countries have spent at an average of 8.0 percent of their GDP to provide better care to their citizens. The spending in Asia/Australasia was 6.6 percent, whereas the countries of Middle East and Africa spent 6.4 percent on healthcare. To tackle a variety of issues plaguing their healthcare system, many countries including India and China are considering to enhance their spending further.
The affluent nations have made providing better healthcare to their citizens their prime concern. Health features as the second-largest category of government spending in these countries. The first, obviously, remains the social protection category that includes providing social assistance, health, unemployment insurance and things like that.
Managing the fast increasing cost of health care has become a formidable challenge for most countries across the globe. According to the study conducted by an eminent consultancy firm Deloitte that is, the spending has raised by just an estimated 1.9 percent in 2012. However, the possibility of its rising again cannot be ruled out.
The rising population has always been the bane for most nations; the developing nations are particularly the worst hit. The rapid increase in populations not only strains the resources of a nation but also make it hard for the governments to provide proper healthcare. This implies that spending per head will rise by an average of 4.4 percent a year from 2014-2017.
Increase in life expectancy ratio
As far as life expectancy is concerned, we can anticipate it to increase from an estimated 72.6 years in 2012 to 73.7 years by 2017. If the research done by Deloitte is to be trusted, the number of people of or above the age 65 will be around 560 million worldwide, which is about 10 percent of the total global population. The rising number of ageing people will further add to the woes of the global healthcare by creating an additional demand for health care services.
Increase in paying capacity
Concurrently, we are witnessing a substantial rise in the number of high-income households, which includes households with an annual income of over $25,000. The number of high-income households is anticipated to rise at an average of 10 percent, to over 500 million. One-half of the total growth would come from the nations of China, Japan, South Korea and India. Encouraged by the economic growth, governments in many emerging markets are considering providing public health care services to confirm to the rising expectations of consumers.]]>