How Digital Transformation Strategy could transform Indonesia's healthcare system for the better

Since the COVID-19 epidemic, the digital healthcare business in Indonesia has rapidly expanded. The country needed to modernise its healthcare system, including digitalisation, in addition to enhancing performance and accessibility. Concerns over Indonesia’s healthcare future led to investments in digital healthcare, and the government is now working to encourage its spread.

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Indonesia’s healthcare sector plays a crucial role in safeguarding the well-being of its people and communities. However, with a population of over 270 million spread across thousands of islands, ensuring equitable access to healthcare services is a significant challenge.

Indonesia’s healthcare industry needs more healthcare talents. The issue is that there are more medical graduates than available job opportunities in the healthcare sector, even in cities. Hospitals then exploit this supply and demand disparity to hire doctors as cheaply as possible to maximise profits, making this more unattractive for local graduates.

Existing doctors work double-triple shifts in multiple places, which can also result in stress and burnout. Many also choose to fly abroad and find better-paying jobs outside the country, resulting in doctor shortage issues in second and thirdtier regions. This condition has an impact on the fulfilment of health talents to build this country’s health landscape to be on par with other developed countries and neighbouring countries in Southeast Asia (SEA).

According to the Ministry of Health of the Republic of Indonesia (MoH), the country requires over 160,000 doctors. At the same time, one of the healthcare reforms planned by the Minister, Budi Gunadi Sadikin, revolves around healthcare talent, among five others, in the 2020-2024 Digital Transformation Strategy. The strategy aims to transform the healthcare system into a more efficient, effective, patient-centred model.

In strengthening and improving healthcare talent, the MoH has also extensively supported health education through multiple scholarship programmes, which aim to support the equitable distribution of health workers. In the future, the government expects that all Indonesian provinces will have essential health services, such as heart disease treatments, by 2024.