The U.S. is the world’s largest healthcare spender, pouring roughly 17% of its GDP—or $5.6 trillion—into treatments and care. Yet, according to Li Zhong, the APAC president of the Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA), while Americans generally have a long lifespan, they have a shorter healthspan than their counterparts in Vietnam, despite the latter devoting just 4.6% of its GDP to health spending.
“Everyone loves to reference the U.S., since it has been able to come up with the most advanced therapies to extend life,” Li said at Fortune’s Southeast Asia 500 Summit in Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City on Nov. 3. “It saves your life, but it’s not very healthy. That’s not what I would suggest for Southeast Asia.”
Li’s comments come as Southeast Asia builds out its systems of care amid rising healthcare costs and a shortage of specialist doctors. “Every country is different and has to find its own route,” he explained. “What’s not right is to automatically reference the U.S. model.”
Many Southeast Asian countries, like Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia, are also rapidly greying. And with that demographic trend comes a rise in chronic disease incidence.
“The scarcity of specialists is becoming a burden,” admits David Utama, the president director of Indonesia’s largest private hospital chain, Siloam Hospitals. “In Indonesia, the ratio of specialists is about 0.2 per 1,000 people. Neighboring Malaysia and Thailand are about 0.5, while Singapore sits at 1.2 [specialists per 1,000 people].”
More patient-centric
To serve patient needs, Asia’s healthcare operators are increasingly looking to community-based care. Singapore and Malaysia-headquartered IHH Healthcare, for instance, operates over fifty primary care clinics under their Parkway Shenton network, while offering ambulatory care, diagnostic and rehabilitative care facilities within residential neighborhoods.
Siloam Hospitals, too, is building more community health facilities in Indonesia. “We have about 41 hospitals across Indonesia, but we’re now building an ecosystem of primary care clinics.” (The firm’s website shows that it currently has 25 clinics, spread across the cities of Palembang, Jakarta, Bali and Surabaya.)
Pharmacies can also play a larger role, Li argued. He points to the UK’s NHS Pharmacy First scheme, which allows patients in England to walk into participating Boots pharmacies for clinical assessments and treatment for seven common conditions, without needing a GP appointment.
“It’s more cost-efficient to utilize community healthcare centers and pharmacies to help with everyday healthcare,” Li explained. “But that’s on the condition that we have to get our [pharmacists] well-trained.”
Ultimately, both experts agreed that public-private partnerships and emerging technology like AI are countries’ best bets at enabling affordable, high-quality healthcare for its populace.
“Patient-centric healthcare requires a collaboration between governments and the private sector,” said Utama. “Who has access, who has scale, [it’s] obviously the government… but the private sector helps to build capability, innovation and speed.”
Since late-2025, Utama and Siloam Hospitals have also been investing in enterprise AI. He says the team will finish building the foundational layer of its AI platform by this year, and is now looking to build digital twins for its patients, doctors and hospitals.
“For us to leapfrog, we need to adopt technology,” Utama concluded. “Today, in our ICUs, because of the data analysis we do, we can predict 30 minutes before a patient drops. Previously, we could only react 30 minutes after a patient dropped.”
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com