We’re on the halfway point from once we set our ambitious sustainable development goal 3 (SDG3) for good health and well-being by 2030. While many agree we were making progress towards this goal, nobody could have foreseen that we can be facing major disruptions from a pandemic.

Measures to slow the spread of COVID-19, together with the added pressures on health systems, have impeded progress toward SDG3. HIV services have been disrupted and TB deaths rose for the primary time since 2005. Two-thirds of the extra deaths from malaria in 2020 in comparison with 2019 were linked to disruptions in the availability of malaria services throughout the pandemic.

Other than COVID-19, we even have the newly-declared public health emergency of international concern Mpox and the newly-identified Langya virus. How will we make a resilient recovery toward health-related SDGs, ensuring that we’re still capable of make progress in other disease areas, notwithstanding one other pandemic?

As we transition towards the recovery of progress towards SDG3, we want to integrate lessons from the pandemic, most notably in our recognition of the worth of diagnostics to healthcare management. The concept of value and the way diagnostic technologies is measured is different from that of therapeutic medical devices or pharmaceuticals.

Accurate and timely diagnosis is step one of the healthcare journey because it guides clinicians on subsequent decisions and is critical to the success of treatment. Despite results of testing influencing as many as 70 per cent of clinical decisions, diagnostics account for lower than 1 per cent of healthcare expenditures.

Diagnostic tests and screening are sometimes neglected yet play a pivotal role in healthcare systems, allowing more concentrate on measuring success through outcomes from disease treatment reasonably than disease prevention and management.

A recent paper by APACMed on strengthening healthcare systems through diagnostics shares multiple case studies on the worth delivered by diagnostic technologies in Asia Pacific. There’s a critical need for greater integration of diagnostic tools in healthcare systems, in addition to an underlying shared recognition of the worth of medical diagnostic technologies, to satisfy population health needs. To accomplish that requires:

Maximizing resources for diagnostic solutions

The proportion of the population with undiagnosed conditions accounts for a diagnostic gap of as much as 62 per cent, the most important such gap along the care pathway. Only 19 per cent of individuals in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) have access to testing.

Underdiagnosing patients is a missed opportunity in taking preventative measures or treating diseases before they progress to a later stage. Not only can accurate diagnoses significantly improve patient outcomes, but they also can save health systems’ costs in aggressive, late-stage treatments. About 1.1 million premature deaths in LMICs might be avoided annually by reducing the diagnostic gap for the high burden conditions equivalent to diabetes, HIV, and tuberculosis.

Also, misdiagnosis, on account of poor quality diagnostic services and products within the region, has led to 38 per cent of maternal deaths while pregnant — all of which might have been avoided. Malaria, essentially the most commonly over-diagnosed disease in LMICs, has a typical error rate of greater than 84 per cent. The benefit-cost ratio of reducing the diagnostic gap is estimated to be as high as 24:1.

We’d like to maximise the impact of resourcing through integrating diagnosis in healthcare systems to effectively tackle disease prevention and treatment. One strategy to do that is for governments to assist clinicians prioritize essentially the most pressing disease burdens by providing a available catalog of tests to handle the population’s most typical conditions.

Rethinking protocols to integrate diagnostics in healthcare

There’s also a necessity to remodel clinical protocols with an emphasis on how diagnostic technologies can improve early detection.

One example is the high degree of unmet needs across the liver disease continuum. Liver inflammation brought on by viral hepatitis can turn into full-fledged cancer, often called hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Nevertheless, greater than half of HCC cases are diagnosed within the later stages of the disease, when the five-year survival rate is lower than 10 per cent. Studies show that within the Asia Pacific, closer to 80 per cent of HCC cases are diagnosed in such a stage.

The instance of liver disease shows a necessity for a three-pronged approach for effective disease progression management from the sooner stages of disease all of the strategy to achieving the specified health final result. This hinges on the usage of diagnostics tools within the identification of susceptibility and risk aspects, early identification of patients with chronic issues, and ultimately, the surveillance therein with a purpose to pick up disease progression that would potentially profit from curative therapy.

Transparent investment and coverage schemes

Complicated payer coverage schemes can hinder access to inexpensive diagnostics. An Economist Intelligence Unit report found that developing countries in Asia Pacific finance healthcare through a posh mix of presidency funding at various levels, donor funding from external sources, in addition to significant out-of-pocket payments by individuals. This healthcare financing environment complicates efforts to screen for and diagnose infectious diseases. A transparent emphasis on treatment over prevention can be seen when health coverage schemes cover more treatment costs over tests or screenings.

While a national disease surveillance program might cover the primary cost of national screening, it could transfer the fee of the required healthcare human resources, to poorly funded local clinics. For instance, within the Philippines, most tuberculosis commodities and testing systems are still procured by the central government, however the local government is predicted to fund screening X-rays of high-risk groups. Local governments could have different capabilities to supply that funding or can have different priorities.

Lack of clarity over who’s answerable for the prices related to screening can also be a typical issue. A multi-tier model factoring the role of presidency, private and donor investment is required to make sure diagnostics remain inexpensive and accessible. Public-private collaboration could make population health gains that can not be achieved with public sector funding alone.

It’s undeniable that diagnostics are transforming the way in which diseases will be prevented, diagnosed, and monitored. They play a critical role in providing sustainable healthcare around the globe and helping people to live longer and healthier lives. While COVID-19 has definitely put diagnostics within the highlight globally, the ability of diagnostics far extends beyond this one disease.

As a healthcare community, we now collectively have a possibility to collectively elevate our infrastructure and capabilities — to make sure we’re all effectively equipped to care for our patients not only today, but for future generations as well.