Health systems around the world are struggling to meet people’s needs. Ageing populations, an increase in chronic diseases, the growing impact of the climate crisis on health – all of these are piling pressure on services already over-stretched and under-resourced.
The COVID-19 pandemic underscored the need for cross-border, cross-sectoral collaboration to overcome complex challenges and build resilience against future threats.
When we come together, we can transform the delivery of healthcare to become more resilient, equitable and sustainable.
That’s why, in 2020, at the height of the pandemic, AstraZeneca joined up with the London School of Economics (LSE) and World Economic Forum to launch the Partnership for Health System Sustainability and Resilience (PHSSR). The PHSSR is a non-profit, worldwide collaboration between academic, non-governmental, life sciences, healthcare, and business organisations with one unified goal – to improve global health by building more sustainable and resilient healthcare systems for the future.
Working with local researchers, the PHSSR helps countries take a critical look at factors that impact and influence their healthcare system across seven domains: governance, financing, workforce, medicines and technology, population health, and environmental sustainability. This multi-dimensional approach delivers informed analysis and actionable recommendations.
PHSSR recommendations are already informing government policy and priorities.
For example, Japan is experiencing social issues including a declining birth rate, ageing population, social inequality and social isolation. The PHSSR analysed Japan’s health system and provided guidance on critical actions needed to realise a broad vision of health system success by the year 2040. One of its key recommendations was to advocate for integrated e-health records. As a result, the government included the development of a health digital platform in the Honebuto – the set of guidelines that informs Japan’s economic policy. The platform will help healthcare providers make guideline-based decisions and detect patients at early stages of their disease.
Digital solutions such as these offer particularly efficient, long-term solutions for prevention, diagnosis and treatment by alleviating workforce shortages, streamlining service delivery and facilitating swift, precise care for patients.
Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) cause 74% of deaths globally – that’s 41 million people every year. These chronic diseases include cardiovascular and chronic respiratory diseases, cancer, diabetes, and mental health conditions.
In the EU, the PHSSR formed an Expert Advisory Group to make high impact health policy recommendations to help address the burden of NCDs. The group formulated recommendations to improve the prevention and early detection of NCDs. Acting early on NCDs could improve health outcomes for people and communities, reduce pressure on over-stretched health systems and benefit societies more broadly by boosting economic activity. Reducing NCDs or slowing disease progression may also help to lower healthcare’s carbon footprint by reducing treatment and travel to clinic needs. In turn, lowering emissions like this may help reduce NCDs made worse by environmental factors.
NCDs are the focus of the next phase of PHSSR research – Policy Roadmaps. These will deep-dive into key enablers of health system sustainability and resilience. Focusing on a single topic, the roadmaps will define measurable goals for health systems to track against and include actionable recommendations.
The global research framework for acting early on NCDs will include cardiovascular, renal and metabolic diseases (including diabetes), cancers and chronic respiratory diseases. Teams around the world will be able to use this new framework to assess their local health system’s capability to act early on NCDs, it will also provide policymakers with clear, country-specific evidence-informed plan of action.
While the focus of each PHSSR report is the individual country, the team can identify patterns and common themes that cross borders and recommend shared strategies for system-strengthening beyond the individual countries studied. Because the health of one nation is indivisible and interdependent on the health of all nations.
Four years on from launch, the partnership is now active in more than 30 countries and includes Philips, KPMG, the Center for Asia-Pacific Resilience and Innovation (CAPRI) and the WHO Foundation, as well as other regional and national organisations.
With its unmatched collective expertise spanning health research, policy and innovation, the PHSSR has built, and continues to build, one of the largest bodies of work on the sustainability and resilience of health systems.
These collaborative efforts have resulted in more than 30 policy changes around the world. Read more here.
Embracing innovation is key to ensuring population-wide, timely access to new medicines and technologies, which has been highlighted through PHSSR research. Digital technologies can support improved prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of disease, and in turn can alleviate workforce shortages, streamline service delivery and enable swift, personalised care for patients. To foster innovation, we must not underestimate the power of country-specific evidence. Japan took on the PHSSR recommendations on electronic health record infrastructure and has prioritised developing a digital platform for collecting and sharing medical information. In the long-term, this will support clinical decision-making and facilitate earlier diagnoses.
Seeing a world of connections creates opportunities that can make a big difference to our health.
The health of people and society is deeply connected to our planet’s health. Ageing populations, a rise in chronic diseases and the impacts of the climate emergency are increasing health inequities and adding further pressures to health systems around the world. We must deliver healthcare that is more equitable, sustainable and resilient.
Want to know more? Read about how AstraZeneca is collaborating with a broad range of public and private organisations to help transform the delivery of healthcare to become more resilient, equitable and net zero. Or take a look at our approach to strengthening health system resilience and improving health equity. To get the complete picture of our sustainability strategy, read our impact publication.