Here’s a glimpse of the blossoming of home healthcare in Southeast Asia

Allen Bacallan, CIO of Cardinal Santos Medical Center, believes the best is yet to come.

Before venturing into the healthcare business, Allen D. Bacallan has held chief information officer (CIO) positions in various consumer and industrial products companies for 2 decades. Allen has been prolific in the healthcare management specialty since 2006, when he joined Makati Medical Centre as its CIO.

An industrial engineering graduate from the University of the Philippines, Allen is currently the CIO of Cardinal Santos Medical Centre, a post he has held since 2008, where he is applying his experiences in the information technology (IT) space of hospitals. His experience in IT was also honed by his stints in the audit of other hospital acquisitions of the Metro Pacific Group.

With diverse experiences in the healthcare and IT space under his belt, Allen continues to see opportunities for growth and improvement in the home healthcare practice in the Philippines.

Allen will talk about the dawn of home healthcare in Asia at the upcoming Manila leg of the inaugural Healthcare Asia Forum 2016. Here’s more about Allen:

HCA: What are your previous experiences and positions held that contributed to who you are today as a healthcare practitioner?

Previous to my current position as Vice President and Chief Information Officer of Cardinal Santos Medical Center, I held a similar post in another big hospital in the same mega-city. And further back in the past I was an industrial engineer; a corporate planner; a market intelligence and research specialist; a management services manager; and an IT director. I worked in the transportation, mining, personal care and pharmaceutical products, industrial products and food products industries. Coming from these non-healthcare background in my college degree background, as well as in these previous jobs – I felt transported to a totally different world when I joined the healthcare industry. In my previous “life”, the deliverables were efficiencies in the supply chain of inanimate products to the market; understanding the desires of customers and advising the marketing teams of what customers think about our products; providing information systems that enable timely management decision-making. In the healthcare space, I realized that I am part of the ecosystem that delivers life, restores life, and improves quality of life.

HCA: What are your key healthcare philosophies and ideologies?

For Cardinal Santos Medical Center, our vision is simply to be the hospital of choice of patients in providing excellent healthcare, and, world-class medical training for our doctors. We do not wish for people in our community to be unwell and aim to get a good market share of them; rather, we say that should the community need medical attention, they will decide to go to our medical facilities because here they feel the homey and family atmosphere that our hospital provides. We inculcate in our entire staff the culture of being a Caring Cardinal Leader.

Can you give us a glimpse of what you will talk about at the 2016 Healthcare Asia Forum?

For my topic in the 2016 Healthcare Asia Forum, I will be talking about the “dawn” of home healthcare, based on our experience in introducing that concept of service in our community. “Dawn” implies the start of a good beginning; not yet getting the whole picture of what the rest of the day will bring, but showing a bright promise. Cardinal Santos Medical Center continues to push the envelope for home healthcare ever since we started the “Cardinal On Wheels” service in 2009. In 2011, we partnered with a telecommunications company for a proof-of-concept telehealth brand of services named “LowCal” (a wellness diet management app), and “Well Watch” (a mobile doctor-patient relationship app). In 2014, our hospital group introduced the “First-Call 24/7” telehealth call center service within the employees community of the Metro Pacific Group of Companies.