The shortage of doctors and essential resources has been a persistent, unsolved problem in hospitals and the healthcare sector in general. The Ministry of Health’s 2023 Health Facts reveals that there is one doctor to 412 Malaysians, or 2.4 doctors for 1,000 people. To benchmark against Asean, Singapore had 2.7, Brunei had 1.6, Thailand 0.9 and Indonesia had 0.6 doctors for every 1,000 people in 2022.

Even with Singapore and Malaysia boasting a higher doctor-to-population ratio among these Asean countries, persistent challenges such as long waiting times for doctor consultations and resource insufficiency continue to plague the healthcare ecosystem. For example, most of us might have experienced this before — arriving at the hospital, only to find a limited number of doctors available, causing the hospital to be overcrowded and long waiting times for doctor consultation. Does AI in healthcare able to revolutionise the healthcare landscape in future while saving more lives? 

The truth behind the healthcare ecosystem