Healthcare is big business. The industry is currently worth over US$8 trillion globally, with US$4 trillion of that value centred in Asia. In this edition of “The INSEAD Perspective: Spotlight on Asia” podcast series, Sameer Hasija, Dean of Asia at INSEAD, speaks with Suhina Singh, co-founder of Singapore-based Jonda Health, about how the region’s healthcare industry currently stands at an inflection point, driven in large part by the impact of AI.

As evidence of this ongoing transformation, Singh, a former clinician, points to the fact that US$37 billion was spent on AI in healthcare in 2025 alone. This figure is growing 40% year-on-year, with AI's share of the sector expected to roughly double to over 30% by 2030. The technology promises to impact the entire continuum of care – from drug discovery, where research timelines are compressing from years to months, to major improvements in diagnostics, treatment and clinical workflows.

Focusing on Asia, the demographic pressures of rapidly ageing populations in markets like Japan and South Korea, and youthful, digitally native populations elsewhere, are acting as twin accelerators of AI adoption in the region, albeit for different reasons. With issues ranging from the spiralling costs of treating chronic conditions to a shortage of clinicians in markets such as India, AI is seen as a means of filling the demand-supply gap.

Governments are already embracing this potential: Singapore has rolled out a clinical AI scribe that’s being used by more than 2,000 healthcare providers, while South Korea has implemented a voucher-based system so that digital health startups can pay for clinical data processing, purchase, and analysis of national health data. One major challenge, though, is that most of these innovations are concentrated in wealthier markets, with rural and lower-income areas in the region still underserved. 

Reflecting on her own experience building JondaX, a health-data transformation engine that converts information into structured, AI-ready formats, Singh is candid about the technical challenges of relying on large language models in a heavily regulated field. In such a high-stakes environment, patient privacy, quality control and data accuracy remain non-negotiable. 

On the flip side, the promise is a future where the individual receives an unprecedented level of care, from frictionless data access, through to highly personalised diagnosis and treatments. And it seems as if parts of Asia are already well on the road to such a future. Taking a broader perspective, Hasija ends by reflecting that AI’s potential to transform a system as complex as healthcare should act as inspiration for other industries, including education, to pursue the same genuine, technology-enabled customer-centricity in their own sectors.