Taking a leap: How tools and tech are advancing access to quality healthcare around the world

United States

In Hawaii, the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2023 Maui wildfires exposed how difficult it can be to coordinate care, staff and beds across multiple hospitals during a crisis — especially in more remote and rural areas. In response, leaders at the Queen’s Health System, the largest private healthcare system in Hawaii, built a $4.5 million command center to monitor capacity in real time across its four hospitals and 10,000 care providers.

The centralized view shows administrators where emergency departments are backing up, where inpatient beds are available and when staff need to shift operations to meet surges in demand. Whether located in a major city or in more rural locations, the same approach can be used to prepare for future emergencies, helping systems anticipate resource needs and better coordinate care.

Canada

In Ontario, administrators at Humber River Hospital — located in the country’s most populous city, Toronto — wanted to serve patients more efficiently in a growing community that already had one of the busiest emergency departments in the whole country.

The hospital team created a 4,500-square-foot Command Centre that draws on AI-powered analytics, continuously pulling in data to assess where bottlenecks are developing in the system that could delay patient care. Practitioners achieve better coordination and can treat patients more quickly, allowing the hospital to help more people without having to invest in additional infrastructure.

Brazil

In Brazil’s Amazon rainforest, people living in remote areas must travel up to eight days by boat to reach the capital city, Manaus. The arduous journey means many women postpone their annual cancer screenings. When breast cancer is detected, it is often at a more advanced stage, making it more difficult to treat.

Dr. Sabrina Bianco, the first radiologist to specialize in breast cancer in Amazonas state, has taken on the mission of making screenings as quick and comfortable as possible. She advocated for the region’s first mammography machine and then, more recently, for a digital mammography system , enabling her to provide 3D imaging and mammography-guided biopsy at the Sensumed clinic. The upgraded technology makes it easier to spot cancer cells. “I know that mammograms save lives,” Dr. Bianco says. 

Greece

A primary challenge to healthcare equity in Greece is distributing care beyond the mainland to its 200 inhabited islands (out of roughly 6,000 total), some of which are home to only a few hundred people and have no doctors in residence.  Handheld ultrasound devices are enabling clinicians to care for patients who live on the remote islands of the Aegean Sea. “It’s made our work significantly easier, especially for home visits to patients who couldn’t move,” says Georgios Plakogiannakis, an Athens-based cardiologist.

As ultrasound technology has improved, practitioners now can see images of patients’ organs, abdomens and even blood vessels that are comparable to what they could achieve with large ultrasound machines that can’t easily travel. Technology also helps clinicians to securely upload data from the ultrasound devices to the cloud, allowing for remote analysis and diagnosis by clinicians in larger hospitals in mainland Greece.

Kenya

Access to prenatal ultrasound in Kenya can depend not so much on whether a machine is available as on whether a trained clinician is nearby to use it. A shortage of sonographers has limited routine scanning for pregnant women, especially in rural locations. To address the gap, a project with Lwala Community Alliance  is training nurses and other frontline healthcare workers in obstetric ultrasound for 28 public facilities. Certified sonographers provide mentorship and additional support. Earlier screening makes it possible to identify high-risk pregnancies sooner and connect expectant mothers with appropriate care. 

Kenya is also expanding access to advanced diagnostics for cancer care. The country’s first public molecular imaging center recently opened at Nairobi’s Kenyatta University Hospital, giving patients access to precision imaging technologies that previously were limited or unavailable in public healthcare systems. The center helps clinicians detect cancer earlier and treat it with more targeted techniques.

Japan

In island nations, practitioners demonstrate resourcefulness to deliver care to their patients, especially those who are elderly or have mobility challenges. In Japan, Dr. Keigo Yasukawa — known as “Dr. Gon” — makes house calls on a Jet Ski to his patients on the smaller islands in the Miyako chain, hundreds of miles from Okinawa. Traveling with a pocket-size wireless ultrasound scanner, Dr. Yasukawa can perform a chest scan, detect conditions such as kidney stones and conduct preventive screenings. 

These convenient services are crucial for people who live on the Miyako Islands, 62% of whom are over age 40. Overall, Japan has the oldest population in the world, with almost a third of its residents over age 65 and more than one in ten aged 80 or older, making it critical to provide accessible healthcare that adapts to their needs.

Ethiopia

For expectant mothers in Ethiopia, vital information such as confirming whether a pregnancy is viable and determining the location of the placenta has at times been out of reach, due to a shortage of ultrasound devices, particularly in rural areas. “The lack of ultrasound led to many stillbirths,” says Desalegn Dawit, head of the Dimtu Primary Health Care Unit.

The Amref Health Africa project has brought portable, handheld ultrasound devices to several regions of Ethiopia, making it possible to take lifesaving action earlier. Patients no longer have to travel long distances to a central hospital — they can be scanned in rural clinics closer to their homes, leading to safer pregnancies and better outcomes.

New Zealand

Prostate cancer is the second-most-common cancer among men, and in New Zealand it is the second-highest cause of death. On the country’s east coast, Dr. Daniel Cornfeld, Mātai clinical lead and head of radiology at Te Whatu Ora Tairāwhiti (Gisborne Hospital), is leading a study using ultrasound-guided biopsy with MRI infusion to more accurately diagnose prostate cancer.

These updated techniques can help clinicians distinguish between aggressive and slow-growing tumors, enabling more targeted treatment plans. “It increases confidence that you’re hitting the target,” Dr. Cornfeld says.