The World Economic Forum says that the global health system is facing a shortfall of $200 billion since the U.S. reduced support for multilateral organization. According to Shyam Bishen, head of the Global Health Initiative at the World Economic Forum, health system projects and resilience efforts are affected because of this.
Bishen noted the critical role that funding plays in developing health systems, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. “If we do not bridge this funding gap, we risk jeopardising progress made in global health over the past decades,” Bishen said.
Bishen also said the WEF is working with the private sector to help bridge part of the gap. He said that healthcare spending has risen to about $10-12 trillion globally, and is growing much faster than economic output.
According to Bishen, around 20-25% of this spending is wasted due to misdiagnosis, overuse of tests and hospitals, and administrative costs.
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Bishen also stated that AI can help reduce that wastage in health systems. Reflecting on it, he said that there have been good examples of the use of AI in the diagnostic side “whether it’s in breast cancer and other imaging where AI can read the images, so you don’t need to engage healthcare professionals as much.” He also mentioned the idea of increasing the use of telehealth, especially to access rural and remote populations.
“We just established a partnership with the government of Saudi Arabia on virtual hospitals.
How do we use virtual hospitals so that we don’t need as many healthcare workers? And using some of those technologies on the telehealth side, on the virtual health side, on the administrative work side, I believe that we can reduce the requirement of the healthcare workers.
Bishen elaborated on the idea of “virtual hospitals”. “A virtual hospital is where somebody goes to a building or a small office or a clinic where you are interacting mostly with a computer. You are using a computer. You’re telling the computer, as you go to your doctor, you tell the doctor what the problem is. You’re telling the computer what the problem is. And the computer, through AI, finds out the diagnosis. It tells you that, okay, it could be this, this, this, and these are the diagnostic tests you require.”
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Bishen also mentioned that the world is not prepared for the outbreak of another pandemic. He said that structural shifts ranging from climate change to geopolitics are making disease outbreaks more frequent, while global coordination to contain them remains fragmented. “The way climate change is happening, the way we live, and the way geopolitics is causing many conflicts around the world, you will see more and more outbreaks,” he said. “The question is how do we stop them from becoming full-blown pandemics.”
The WEF is working with organizations like the World Health Organization, and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations to build a global disease surveillance system capable of detecting new pathogens and variants early.
“We want to make sure that we are aware of new pathogens and new variants as soon as they emerge,” Bishen said. “It doesn’t matter which corner of the world.” He added that AI can play a critical role in tracking, diagnosing and analyzing outbreaks in real time, enabling faster public-health responses once threats are identified.
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