While the APAC region comprises 60% of the world’s population, the region comprises only 22% of the population. global health care spending. According to the World Health Organization, most developing countries in Asia spend only 2-3% of GDP on health, and in many cases public funding amounts to less than $150 per person per year, compared to more than $4,000 per person under OECD rules. Government procurement bottlenecks add further friction, delaying nearly 40% of major health projects. This means that in practice, families usually bear the cost, doctors improvise, and communities bear the burden.

However, with populations aging faster than incomes rising, that model is no longer viable. Rising rates of chronic disease require lifelong care, rather than a single intervention. At the same time, climate stress increases respiratory and water-borne diseases, while wealthier Asians demand higher quality, more affordable health care.

Governments have reached the threshold of what public finance can do. Health care competes with education, defense and infrastructure for scarce public capital. Even the most committed governments cannot expand capacity quickly.

Private capital is critical to expanding healthcare systems in Asia—it can move quickly and deploy patient, flexible funding that enables greenfield projects and scalable platforms.

It combines three capabilities that are urgently needed in the region: long-term investment corresponding to a multi-year horizon in healthcare infrastructure, operational discipline that strengthens management and clinical standards, and a level of system level that cannot be achieved in fragmented markets.

The case for private capital

Across Asia, most new hospital beds are now privately funded. Dialysis networks, oncology platforms, diagnostic systems, and new pharmaceutical plants exist only because private capital moves faster than public systems.

The healthcare market in Asia is expected to grow to $5 trillion by 2030, driving 40% of the sector global growth. Private investors took advantage of this opportunity because Asian healthcare is a volume business: profit comes not by charging more to fewer people, but by paying attention to lower costs. That is why the most effective health care models in Asia differ from those in the West. In Singapore, day-surgery centers allow patients to go home within hours, unlike the longer hospital stays that remain common in Western systems. In India and China, digital platforms and national health records cut wait times and errors, addressing interoperability gaps that still plague many developed systems.

This model requires patient capital: investors willing to reinvest, work with clinicians and regulators, and build capacity over time. Closing the health care gap in Asia will otherwise require millions of new beds and hundreds of thousands of clinicians, a process that will take decades. Technology and AI therefore become important levers: improving diagnostic capacity, reducing unnecessary visits, and expanding care in rural and peri-urban areas. Instead of relying solely on scarce human resources, technology brings care closer to the patient.

Healthcare investors don’t have to choose between profit and purpose. The more efficient care is provided, the cheaper it is, the more lives can be positively impacted, while returning income to investors. Since Quadria’s investment in NephroPlus in May 2024, the dialysis network has added more than 110 centers, improved patient outcomes, strengthened governance and partnerships, and expanded internationally, including receiving approval to open its first center in Saudi Arabia later this year. Its recent IPO shows that scaling essential healthcare can deliver both measurable health impact and strong investor returns.

Build results-focused systems

The question facing Asia is no longer whether private capital should be involved in health care. That’s it. The real question is whether it will be patient, disciplined and principled enough, and socially compatible enough, to meet the occasion.

The risk today is not too much private capital, but the wrong capital. Often, long-term investments in health care are sidelined not because the need is not clear, but because the previous investment frameworks are not well suited to the realities of health care – long construction time, regulatory complexity and returns that compound through results rather than speed.

So governments have a decisive role to play. By de-risking important health care investments, setting clearer market rules and strengthening stewardship, policymakers can flock to patient private capital and ensure that impact and return reinforce rather than undermine each other.

In the end, health care systems are judged not by ideology, but by results: What they cost people not only in money, but in dignity, time and peace of mind. And by whether, when the bill comes, it ends a life—or allows one to continue.

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