The topic of access to healthcare is so close to the heart of Siemens Healthineers Head of External Affairs and Healthcare Access, Tisha Boatman.

It’s a shocking fact that half the world’s population still lacks access to basic healthcare. The social toll this takes can be devastating. According to the World Health Organization's 'Billions Left Behind on the Path to Universal Health Coverage' in 2023, millions of people are pushed, or further pushed, into poverty as they pay out of pocket for treatment, often far too late for it to make a difference.

This year, at the World Economic Forum's (WEF) meeting where ideas are exchanged about how to make lasting change, global leaders met to discuss 'Collaborations for an intelligent age.' At the event in Davos, Siemens Healthineers took part in many discussions about ways to work together to benefit more patients.

Fresh from a trip to WEF, Tisha has discussed what motivates her, why access to healthcare is so close to her heart, the role strategic partnerships play in increasing healthcare access, and the impact she is helping make through her career with Siemens Healthineers.

Access to healthcare is close to Tisha's heart

Tisha shares that when she was in the U.S. Army, she spent time in under resourced settings and saw first-hand how people struggled to deal with health challenges in difficult settings.

"But I didn’t fully understand this until I was diagnosed with breast cancer while living in Denmark. I was treated in two of the best hospitals in the world in a country with an excellent healthcare system. I had government insurance to cover the costs of all of the scans, blood tests, multiple surgeries and radiotherapy treatment I needed," explains Tisha.

"Crucially, I had the support of my family and the company to take time off as needed. In another geography or culture, my story could have been very different. Timely diagnosis and intervention saved my life.”

Power of strategic partnerships in driving meaningful impact

Tisha explains how the diagnosis and treatment of diseases is possible today in ways that couldn't be imagined even a generation ago. But, she adds, this progress only benefits half the world because the other half doesn’t have access to critical healthcare services.

"We need to push beyond siloed thinking within our individual organizations and work together across industries, regions, and even societies. At the WEF meeting last week, I had the opportunity to discuss how to scale health solutions with both some of our existing partners and potential new ones," she says.

"Our long-standing partnership with City Cancer Challenge has shown how a locally driven, globally supported partnership can have real patient impact. In the city of Cali, in Colombia, for example, we brought digital expertise to connect disparate local organizations – government, hospitals, universities and associations – that were individually working to improve cancer outcomes. This has already helped reduce the time from first cancer symptoms to diagnosis to on average 22 days from 90."

"Earlier diagnosis is really important because it means treatment can start sooner and this can literally make the difference between life and death. We’re scaling this success, taking what we learned with digitalization and connectedness in Cali to Colombia’s Valle de Cauca region and to Kumasi, in Ghana. For us to know that impact is meaningful it must be measurable. One of the ways we do this is by tracking patient touchpoints which are the number of times patients interact with our systems, tests, or software solutions," suggests Tisha.

"We have committed to achieving 3.3 billion touchpoints worldwide by 2030 from 2.6 billion in 2024. And this includes an ambitious 1.25 billion in low- and middle-income countries. We also aim to deliver 6 million hours of training because skilled workers are the backbone of any healthcare system.”

Declarations of intent turn into real change

As partnerships are initially only a promise to take action, Tisha discusses how declarations of intent turn into real change, and provides some key examples of how Siemens Healthineers is partnering with initiatives to ensure that meaningful change happens.

“One example is our partnership with the UN children’s fund UNICEF Deutschland, which aims to help end maternal, newborn and child deaths in Sub-Saharan Africa from diseases like early infant HIV and tuberculosis, which are preventable and treatable," explains Tisha.

"In the pilot regions in Ghana, for example, just two years into the partnership, the average turnaround time for HIV test results has been reduced to one to five days from three to six months in 2022. This is tangible patient impact. The findings can be scaled up and implemented in other parts of Ghana which is what the partnership is now focusing on."

"Another example is our involvement as a founding sponsor of the Global Alliance for Women’s Health (GAWH), an initiative of the WEF which highlights not only the social but also the economic toll of the gender health gap. Women spend a quarter more of their lives in poor health compared to men, despite living longer. The GAWH works to increase the funding and prioritization of women’s health. This is not just the right thing to do, it also makes economic sense because closing this gap could boost the world economy by $1 trillion in the next two decades," concludes Tisha.

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