| Martin Burger, SAP's senior industry advisor of healthcare in Asia Pacific and Japan regions, introduces the company's disease control database analysis system during a press conference at Jangchung Gymnasium in central Seoul, Aug. 13. / Courtesy of SAP Korea |
By Yoon Sung-won
The advancement of mobile, cloud and big data analysis technologies has enabled industries to provide customers with services that are tailored to meet their different needs.
SAP, the world's leading developer of database analysis platform, said its goal in the healthcare sector is to establish an environment in which hospitals can provide personalized medical services.
"Whereas we already have worked with hospitals to provide platform services for their business management, our key future vision is to realize personalized medical services so that hospitals can provide individualized treatments based on each patient's different body value and backgrounds," said Martin Burger, SAP's senior industry advisor of healthcare in Asia Pacific and Japan regions, during an interview in Seoul on Aug. 13.
Burger said the company is working with governments to encourage medical industries to open up and collaborate ore with other businesses.
"Not only in Korea but also in many other countries, hospitals tend to remain conservative in sharing medical data with other businesses. Some governments, the German one for instance, are willing to change this and incentivize hospitals to collaborate more," he said. "The process may be slow. But hospitals will have to open up for collaborations. Private hospitals will not be able to create profits unless they collaborate."
The Germany-based company said it has introduced strong localized security measures and located its datacenters that governments cannot look into whenever they want.
"We have worked to meet Europe's toughest datacenter security standards and satisfy different local legal obligations regarding security and protection of personal medical information," he said. "In terms of big data management and analysis, we remove names of each patient and instead, set identifiable codes to protect their privacy."
Based on the market leadership with its database solution called "SAP HANA," the company has intensified its drive in the healthcare and sports data analysis sector.
Burger expected that more IT companies will be urged to enter the rapidly expanding healthcare market.
"In the past, medical services were provided only by doctors in hospitals. But technological advancements such as network and wearable devices have expanded the market, giving IT companies opportunities," he said. "Telecom companies, for example, are showing great interest in this sector to diversify their service offerings tapping into their existing strengths."
Burger stressed that SAP's service differentiates from other vendors in grasping meaningful information from the bigger picture.
"Be it finance, workforce management and clinical data, we work to really understand how a company works. As we have accumulated experiences in providing data analysis services for enterprises for more than 40 years, we know well about how to collect data within an organization," he said.
Global vendors such as Microsoft are gearing up to follow SAP in the database solution market by strengthening their cloud computing and big data analysis technologies. But Burger showed confidence in the SAP's dominance in the market.
"We also have continued to invest in research and development to stay in the lead," he said. "In our customers' perspective, it will not be easy to shift to other vendors because we already established loyal partnerships which require certain level of trust."