Future of Digital Health in Vietnam

Over the past two decades, Vietnam has achieved laudable improvements in key quality of life metrics such as life expectancy, infant mortality, and access to affordable medicines. This success is the result of the government’s concerted effort to modernize the health system and expand access to affordable care. At the time of writing, Vietnam has extended Universal Health Coverage (UHC) to 90% of the population, and targets to reach 95% by 2025. This coverage ratio leads its regional peer markets.

The country nevertheless still has a relatively high out-of-pocket expense ratio while spending the highest amount of GDP on healthcare. It is therefore likely that if Vietnam hopes to continue to expand access to quality care and maintain sustainable health financing, the health system will need to find a way to provide more services, while expending fewer resources per patient. Digital health is one answer to achieving scale of access while improving clinical outcomes and maintaining costs. To do this, the government needs to expand market access and encourage international business and clinical partnerships.

UK companies have many of the missing digital pieces Vietnam needs to accelerate progress towards its healthcare development goals. At the same time, digital health companies that understand Vietnam’s unique population health challenges and can provide collaborative solutions will gain access to one of Asia’s fastest growing healthcare markets. Through this market access, companies can achieve early-entrant advantage and meaningfully help Vietnam’s financial and physical burden of disease.

This document is intended as an introductory guide to Vietnam’s digital health market.