Eyeworld

Reporting from the Asia-Pacific Academy of Ophthalmology (APAO) Congress March 1–5, 2017 Singapore EW MEETING REPORTER 172 April 2017 processes that have a high level of complexity. This system, Dr. Tan said, may have served well for over five decades, but if you superimpose the aforementioned changes, it will eventually fail. Consider aging's effect on the current model of healthcare delivery, in which elderly patients over 65 years old are four times more likely to be hospitalized and will have to stay in the hospi- tal longer than a younger person around 45 years old. Each elderly patient incurs larger expenditures— as much as three times more than a 45-year-old. By 2030, Singapore, for one, will have nearly 1 million elderly residents (cf. 460,000 in 2015). "If we continue with this cur- rent model, then the implications for the future are immense," Dr. Tan said. Part of the reason for the high requirements in this model is that aging is associated with multiple T he 32nd Asia-Pacific Acad- emy of Ophthalmology (APAO) meeting took place from March 1–5, 2017, in Singapore. It covered a variety of subspecialty topics in the form of symposia, special sessions, instruction courses, live surgeries, and other sessions. First plenary session talks systems and macular holes In his Academia Ophthalmologi- ca Internationalis Oration, Chorh Chuan Tan, MD, Singapore, made a compelling case for "Transforming Health Systems for the Future" at a fundamental systems level. Dr. Tan had the honor of deliv- ering the Oration at the first plenary session of the APAO. Healthcare systems around the world, he said, are dealing with a large and growing mismatch between the rapid increase and changing nature of healthcare needs and demands and the way most health services are designed, funded, and run. Dr. Tan identified two major drivers for the rapid increase and changing nature of healthcare de- mand. First is the pandemic of non- communicable chronic diseases (NCDs). According to the World Health Organization (WHO), of the 56 million global deaths reported in 2012, two-thirds were due to NCDs—three-fourths of them in low- and middle-income countries affecting relatively young people— and the burden is growing. The number of diabetics, for instance, was reported to be 336 mil- lion in 2012; the number is project- ed to grow to 552 million by 2030. This is only going to get worse as populations around the world continue to rapidly age. Second, healthcare delivery sys- tems are still centered around acute hospitals. Disease management is focused on individual patients, with specialist and subspecialist-led Reporting from the 32nd Asia-Pacific Academy of Ophthalmology Congress

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