Healthcare growth seen most in emerging markets

The Middle East, Africa and Asia are some of the new growth markets for the health industry as governments in these regions put a high premium on developing their social infrastructure such as healthcare facilities, says a top official at GE Healthcare.

The company, a healthcare business unit of General Electric (GE) Co, posted a 13-per-cent hike in its full-year profit to $2.7 billion (Dh9.9bn) in 2010 as against $2.4bn the previous year. Karim Karti, President and CEO of GE Healthcare EAGM (Eastern and Africa Growth Markets), said this uptrend can be attributed to the noticeable strength of emerging markets as well as increased sales in their core products.

“You can look at the growth from two perspectives. First, emerging markets are driving the growth – our region [the Middle East], China and India are growing at a fast rate. We have noticed a broad-based growth from a product standpoint. Our code products and life sciences have done very well,” Karti said.

Organisers of this week’s Arab Health conference in Dubai said the Middle East’s healthcare sector is anticipated to get a major investment boost with spending seen tripling to $60bn annually by 2025.

Private equity firms in the region have also given infrastructure spending huge attention in the recent past years despite the onslaught of the global financial crisis. In its report late last year, Bank of America-Merrill Lynch forecasted that infrastructure investments in the Middle East will remain strong in the next three years.

Subsectors such as transportation, utilities, education and healthcare have been the most specific targets of private equity firms with about $400bn being poured in for projects in the pipeline.

GE Healthcare promotes ‘healthymagination’

“We see the Middle East as an area where we want to continue investing. We’ve had our presence here for a long time as we have direct operations in the UAE and Saudi Arabia. The region is growing because the governments are building heavily on building hospitals and providing the best quality of healthcare services and we want to do that in the best way we can,” says Karti.

Through their campaign, “healthymagination”, the company hopes to develop innovative solutions with the ultimate goal of reducing medical costs, increasing access to medical facilities and improving quality of healthcare services across the world.

Aside from developing products, Karti said the GE Healthcare is also very much involved in training their clients on how to maximise the potential of the products they offer, as well as in providing region-based advisory services to help hospitals identify the specific solutions they need for their institutions.