BUDAPEST/WARSAW (Reuters) – Eastern Europe is a new frontier for private medical care, and insurers and tech startups are racing to steal a march on their rivals by harnessing the region’s health data.
Growing numbers of people in Eastern European states, from Hungary and Poland to Romania, are turning to private health. The shift is being driven by rising wages, coupled with low public health spending which has often led to staff shortages and long waiting times for tests and surgery.
Now big insurance players in the region, including PZU, Generali, Vienna Insurance Group (VIG) and Allianz, are looking to gather and analyze patient data from the fast-growing market to improve risk assessments and pricing.
“Data is the foundation of the future,” said Gabriella Almassy, general manager of VIG’s Hungarian division, adding that data would be key to identifying where profits can me made in the region’s increasingly competitive health insurance market.
To that end, many…
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