What if?
What if telemedicine could help delay or even reverse the spread of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in Sub-Saharan Africa, ensuring that people’s wellbeing grows in tandem with their life expectancy? What if predictive medicine could detect undiagnosed depression or predict cardiovascular risks, saving millions of people from suffering or dying?
Health impacts
‘Big Data’ and ‘Predictive Medicine’ can prove to become key when detecting risks and tailoring treatments for patients suffering from everything from depression to cardiovascular disease.
If we imagined a scenario where predictive medicine could detect and care for only 10% more of people suffering from depression in the US, we find an associated wellbeing impact of 113,435 WALYs. Similarly, if we imagined that 5% of heart attacks and strokes could be prevented as a result of AI predictions, that could gener - ate approximately 75.000 WALYs in Europe.
Detect 10% more people suffering from depression using predictive medicine (US)
34.1
Increase life expectancy in Sub-Saharan Africa (to reach 60.4 years) using telehealth
17543
WALY per 100.000 individuals
Community impacts
It is believed that some areas of conventional healthcare can be substituted with telehealth, and that this exercise could prove to be either more cost-effective (capable of producing the same patient benefits, but at lower cost) or more cost-efficient (capable of producing more patient benefits at the same cost). In the former case, we estimate that a 10% cost reduction of healthcare spending in the US is capable of generating wellbeing value equivalent to 32,000 WALYs.
Telemedicine also holds a potential massive untapped potential in terms of its ability to delay or reverse the spread og NCDs in Sub-Saharan Africa. As NCDs are currently causing are significant increase in years spent in poor health across Sub-Saharan African countries, but if telehealth could reverse this effect and drive healthy life expectancy equal to the level in Iraq in Iraq (60.4 years), more than 200 million WALYs could be saved annually.
Lift economic burden of conventional healthcare using telehealth (US)
9.6
WALY per 100.000 individuals
Stability impacts
It is believed that some areas of conventional healthcare can be substituted with telehealth, and that this exercise could prove to be either more cost-effective (capable of producing the same patient benefits, but at lower cost) or more cost-efficient (capable of producing more patient benefits at the same cost). In the former case, we estimate that a 10% cost reduction of healthcare spending in the US is capable of generating wellbeing value equivalent to 32,000 WALYs.
Telemedicine also holds a potential massive untapped potential in terms of its ability to delay or reverse the spread og NCDs in Sub-Saharan Africa. As NCDs are currently causing are significant increase in years spent in poor health across Sub-Saharan African countries, but if telehealth could reverse this effect and drive healthy life expectancy equal to the level in Iraq in Iraq (60.4 years), more than 200 million WALYs could be saved annually.