Novartis partners with local healthcare units to enhance public health awareness

Based on a patient-centric approach, besides providing knowledge about diseases and health topics, Hello Bacsi will also facilitate patients through their health and wellness journey by providing proactive health screening programmes for early diagnosis.

The project aims to provide useful advice to increase disease awareness in the community

Within the framework of the project, sharing the same passion for applying digital technology in healthcare, experts from the Respiratory Society, K Hospital, Ho Chi Minh City Rheumatology Association, and Ba Ria-Vung Tau Eye Hospital will provide professional advice and develop disease awareness and health-related content, while Hello Bacsi will use digital platforms to bring this content to patients and the community.

Content will be developed for both patients and caregivers in diverse formats such as articles, infographics, and videos which can be accessed conveniently and easily. The collaboration will initially focus on ophthalmology, dermatology, and rheumatology, asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), breast cancer, and is expected to expand into other therapeutic areas in the future.

Content will be developed in diverse formats to make it easily and conveniently accessible

According to statistics from January 2021, Vietnam’s population reached 97.75 million, of which about 68.72 million people are using the internet, accounting for 70.3 per cent of the population.

The number of social media accounts is 72 million, accounting for 73.7 per cent of the total population. The habit of regularly using digital tools at the same time brings remarkable changes to people’s health awareness. The demand to search for health information from both online and offline sources is also increasing significantly.

In addition, as a consequence of overcrowding in the majority of big hospitals across the country, patients often only receive short consultation sessions with doctors, creating huge unmet need of patients to improve knowledge about diseases and their treatment.

Patients and the community need a reliable, up-to-date, and convenient source of medical information. Despite the strong growth of the internet in the country, the application of digital platforms in the health sector is still lagging.

An estimated 10.3 million people in Vietnam will have access to useful information on health and disease management

“At Novartis, we understand these dynamics and our role in sharing the responsibility and partnering with the health sector with a patient-centric approach,” said Amitabh Dube, country president of Novartis Vietnam. “We have seized the opportunity to leverage digital platforms to improve people’s health and disease awareness, update disease prevention knowledge, and to subsequently encourage people to proactively take periodic health screening for early detection and treatment, to enable them to live healthy and quality lives.”

Hello Bacsi is a unit of Hello Health Group which was founded in 2015 with the mission of leading Asia in the democratisation of health and wellness knowledge, empowering millions of consumers and patients to make more informed decisions and to live healthier and happier lives.

Hello Bacsi has built a digital technology ecosystem with diverse tools to engage users across its website, Facebook, Instagram, and Zalo.

In early 2020, Novartis Vietnam Ltd. became the first multinational pharmaceutical company to successfully transform into a foreign-invested enterprise and fully operationalise its import activities.

Through long-term commitments, Novartis is supporting the domestic healthcare system and contributing to the socioeconomic development of the country.

Novartis is a leader in innovative medicine across many therapeutic, including oncology, cardiovascular, respiratory; ophthalmology; pain relief; neuroscience, dermatology and immunology, cell and gene therapy, and more. The company is also a top player in high-quality generics and biosimilars through its Sandoz unit, and is one of the largest investors in clinical trials in Vietnam.