The Internet is much more than a multi-billion dollar industry. The world’s economy now depends on this global “cloud”, which was once little more than a means of connecting different computers over a phone network. Today, the digital age has vast new potential to serve as a force of progress in the global economy, but better, smarter public policies will be needed for that potential to become reality.

Some 83 million people suffer from diabetes in the OECD area. On current trends, that will rise to almost 100 million by 2030. Speaking at the European Diabetes Leadership Forum in Copenhagen, OECD Deputy Secretary-General Yves Leterme said, “preventing and treating diabetes and its complications costs about €90 billion annually in Europe alone.

For the first time in decades, health spending has not increased in real terms on average across OECD countries. According to figures published in the latest OECD health data 2012, the growth in health spending in 2010 slowed or turned negative in almost all OECD countries. 

Emerging economies have made good progress on health coverage recently, but the share of out-of-pocket payments in total health expenditure remains significantly higher than in most advanced countries.

The growing burden of healthcare expenditure on public budgets is hardly a recent phenomenon. For 15 years before the onset of the financial crisis, health spending per capita had been going up by over 4% per year in real terms across the OECD area–much faster than growth in real incomes. Nearly all OECD countries will soon have nearuniversal healthcare coverage–an historic achievement.

The number of people travelling abroad to seek medical treatment appears to have been growing in recent years. This could be part of a growing global trend.

“Obesity is one of the foremost public health emergencies of our time.”

Interviews of leaders of Portugal healthcare private sector.

The United States spent 16% of its national income (GDP) on health in 2007. This is by far the highest share in the OECD and more than seven percentage points higher than the average of 8.9% in OECD countries. Even France, Switzerland and Germany, the countries which, apart from the United States, spend the greatest proportion of national income on health, spent over 5 percentage points of GDP less: respectively 11.0%, 10.8% and 10.4% of their GDP.

“Attitudes are the real disability”, says Henry Holden, a well-known comedian and advocate for the disabled. Education is clearly important in this respect, but ironically, schools themselves have much to do in how they deal with disabled students.

Everyone accepts that education is vital for a healthy economy, but now there is strong evidence that it contributes to a healthy body too. Understanding the Social Outcomes of Learning makes the claim that those with more schooling also tend to have better health, as well as more civic engagement.

Until recently, public health authorities and policy makers have largely ignored rare diseases. It is time to afford them higher priority. Here is why.

Healthcare must be maintained as an essential public good

A recent OECD Recommendation on the Governance of Clinical Trials issued in December 2012 could improve the outlook for fighting deadly diseases around the world. Here is how.

In the last edition of the OECD Observer we showed how investing in a gas-based kitchen can save lives. The simple water closet can also be a means to good health and dignity, and a source of economic wellbeing, says a new OECD report, Benefits of Investing in Water and Sanitation.

In 1950, less than 1% of the global population was over 80. By 2050, the share of those aged 80 and over is expected to reach nearly 10% across OECD countries. The trouble is, while people are living longer, they are not always able to look after themselves. Relying on family help can be difficult, not just financially, but also because, as people live longer, their children may also be ageing and facing challenges of their own. That is why public authorities are starting to focus on the issue of long-term care and the provision of services for elderly people with reduced functional capacities.

Synthetic biology has the potential to drive significant advances in biomedicine. But there are myriad scientific, social, commercial and legal issues, which policymakers have set out to address.

Can greater use of information technology to manage whole healthcare systems help? The National Health Service Information Centre (NHS IC), England’s central, authoritative source of health and social care information for frontline decision makers, believes it can.

The healthcare sector rarely features prominently in trade policy. This is unfortunate, since the enormous differences in healthcare costs between countries imply that there are large potential gains from increased trade, writes economist Dean Baker.

That the health of citizens in OECD countries is improving is not in question. How sustainable healthcare systems are, however, is more of an issue. How can information technology help?

In the aftermath of the financial crisis, one question is how to balance the short-term pressure on the health budgets with the long-term obligations to deliver ever better health services to the public. Striking the right balance is not an easy task.

The cost of healthcare is on the rise, and with budgets tight, governments are anxious to contain expenditures. There is ample room for getting better value for money.

With austerity the order of the day in most OECD countries, the public is understandably anxious that budget cuts do as little harm as possible to the services they depend on. Few sectors capture the dilemmas this poses for policymakers quite like healthcare.

There were an estimated 140,000 suicides in OECD countries in 2006, the most recent year for which internationally comparable data is available. Death rates were lowest in the southern European countries of Greece, Italy and Spain, as well as Mexico and the UK, at fewer than seven deaths per 100,000 people. They were highest in Korea, Hungary, Japan and Finland, at 18 or more deaths per 100,000 people.

Health spending rises; Round up; Soundbites; Benvenuto!; Economy; Food speculation question; Chinese flexibility welcomed; Slovenia joins the OECD; Plus ça change...

The use of information and communication technologies in the health sector lags behind its use in many other parts of the economy, yet the advantages and potential savings are evident. Policymakers can do much to help close the gap.

For millions of people worldwide, hunger and malnutrition are common everyday challenges. For some, even famine is a threat. But in many developed countries, food abundance brings other serious nutritional and health problems. Though these are being addressed, western habits are starting to spread.

The spread of unhealthy diets and sedentary lifestyles have led to rising rates of overweight and obesity. This has meant a greater burden of chronic diseases, such as heart disease and diabetes.

One in nine women are diagnosed with breast cancer at some point in their life and one in thirty die from the disease. Though survival rates are improving, due to a combination of increased awareness, earlier diagnosis and better treatments with innovative drugs, there are considerable differences in measured outcomes of cancer control across OECD countries. For example, while close to 90% of women aged 50-69 are screened annually in the Netherlands and Finland, only around 20% of women in that age group are screened in the Slovak Republic and Japan. Some countries that had low screening rates in 2000, such as the Czech and Slovak Republics, showed sharp increases by 2006, whereas some countries with already high rates, such as the US, Finland and Norway, reported declines.

Everyone puts off visits to the doctor and dentist at one point or another; but how often do people forego a check-up, treatment, or decide not to fill a prescription just because it costs too much?

The developing world needs millions of trained health workers immediately just to provide the most basic healthcare, yet doctors are leaving poor countries to go to richer ones.

The pharmaceutical industry’s important role in the OECD economy is reflected in expenditure, with a total of US$569 billion on pharmaceuticals (excluding pharmaceuticals for in-patients) in 2005.

The advent of the Internet has revolutionised the compilation, assessment and distribution of information relating to healthcare. This has modified the traditional doctor-patient relationship in a number of significant ways.

Diabetes has become one of the most serious public health challenges of the 21st century. Over 150 million adults are affected worldwide, with the number expected to double in the next 25 years.

In 2002, the cost of diabetes in the United States was an estimated $92 billion in medical expenditures and $40 billion in lost productivity, according to the American Diabetes Federation.

You rightly point out that “the supply of medical staff reflects global movements of labour” (No 262, Databank, July 2007). But many of us might disagree with your upbeat headline: “Healthy immigration”. In a report published in 2005, the Royal African Society argues that while recruitment of African medical professionals has shored up western health services, it has left the health sector in sending countries facing permanent crisis or even complete collapse.

Ageing will boost demand for healthcare, but at a time when healthcare professionals are themselves ageing, how can that demand be met? Suppose a scenario with no growth in the demand for doctors in a country, and no migration either.

There are roughly 45 million disabled people living in Europe, but how do they and elderly people like to get around? They would call a taxi. The combination of the personal service that taxis offer, their wide availability and door-to-door operations enable them to respond particularly well to this population’s special travel needs. Although several countries have made progress in improving the accessibility of taxi services, much remains to be done.

In October 2006, 16-year-old Lisa Norris died at home in Scotland after receiving 17 overdoses of radiation treatment for a brain tumour. Nearly 200,000 people could be dying each year in the US because of in-hospital medical errors, suggests a 2004 study by healthcare company Health Grades. According to a recent survey conducted for the European Commission by Eurobarometer, four out of five Europeans think that medical error is an important issue in their country, and nearly one in four said that they or a member of their family had been personally affected by clinical mistakes.

The supply of medical staff also reflects global movements of labour. Indeed, there were some 1.3 million foreign born health professionals–nurses, doctors, pharmacists, dentists, etc.–living in OECD countries in 2000, according to a special report in the latest International Migration Outlook.

Whole communities in the developing world are being crippled by neglected infectious diseases. Changing the way intellectual property rights are managed is vital for attracting the pharmaceutical investment needed to tackle them. Every eight months a new infectious disease appears, joining the roster of those that already affect one in six people on earth. The vast majority of those infected live in developing nations.

Are you a left-brain or a right-brain person? Do you learn while you sleep? Do men and boys have different brains than women and girls? Popular misconceptions such as these pepper ads, magazine covers and conversations. What is fiction and what is fact, and where did they originate?

Traditionally a male bastion in many countries, the medical profession has seen the proportion of female doctors steadily increasing, accounting now for an average of 38% of all doctors in OECD countries, up from 24% a quarter of a century ago.

The performance of health care systems is under scrutiny. The Health Care Quality Indicator Project can help identify what works and what does not. And that will help policy decisions too.

Switzerland’s health system is arguably one of the world’s best, but at what cost? This is a question raised in a new report produced jointly by the OECD and the World Health Organization (WHO).