A look at the global healthcare industry reveals two distinct trends. One involves people who access high-cost medical care and the healthcare professionals who serve this affluent demographic. The other involves people striving to maintain their health on a limited budget and the healthcare professionals who cater to them. For instance, annual per-capita healthcare spending is $9,800 in the U.S. and $4,200 in Japan, whereas in Indonesia, it is a mere $112. Furthermore, Indonesia has 3.7 doctors per 10,000 people—significantly fewer than Japan’s 24 or China’s 17. Given these disparities in both cost and the number of physicians, I set out to explore how these two approaches contribute to health and quality of life.
Let us first turn our attention to the wealthy United States. Healthcare costs in the U.S. account for over 15% of its GDP. With a GDP of 2,000 trillion yen, this translates to 300 trillion yen in healthcare spending. For comparison, Japan’s GDP is 500 trillion yen, with healthcare costs totaling 40 trillion yen—representing 8% of its GDP. In the U.S., there are segments of the population whose well-being is securely protected; the wealthy subscribe to high-end health insurance plans. The U.S. insurance model is built on a system that preventive care reduces the number of sick patients, thereby maintaining and improving member health while generating substantial profits for both insurance companies and medical providers. Health screenings are less expensive than surgeries. They have established a clever system that the less often patients need to visit the hospital, the more profit is generated. Insurance companies boost their earnings by providing health-related information. Consequently, the wealthy enjoy the assurance that if they do fall ill, they will recover.
What kind of medical care do patients with limited healthcare budgets receive? Tuberculosis is one of the world’s three major infectious diseases, alongside AIDS and malaria. In 2022, there were 10.6 million new cases of tuberculosis (TB) and approximately 1.3 million deaths. Ninety percent of those infected live in developing countries, and every year, 4 million people remain infected without being diagnosed. Detecting the disease involves procedures such as chest X-rays and culturing sputum samples to check for the presence of *Mycobacterium tuberculosis*. Preventing and treating this formidable disease requires an estimated $13 billion (approximately 1.9 trillion yen) annually. In developing nations, there is a demand for testing methods that provide immediate results without relying on complex diagnostic equipment; vocal biomarkers are emerging as a promising candidate. Low-cost vocal biomarker tests for TB hold significant value for use in developing countries with fragile healthcare systems. AI models were trained using smartphone recordings from patients with pulmonary tuberculosis and those with other respiratory diseases. The system achieved 76% accuracy in identifying TB patients and 72% accuracy in identifying non-TB patients. Even with this level of accuracy, the technology could serve as a vital tool for preventing outbreaks in developing countries with underdeveloped medical infrastructure by enabling the on-the-spot detection of TB patients.
