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Rising costs in the healthcare sector, a shortage of qualified personnel, and technology investments are leading organizations to seek collaborative solutions. Partnerships ranging from hospitals and pharmaceutical companies to insurers and technology firms can ensure more efficient use of resources and enable Turkey to generate more value in the global healthcare market.
When you sit at a meeting table in the healthcare sector, you hear similar statements from managers of different institutions: Costs are rising. Finding qualified personnel is becoming more difficult. Investment in technology is necessary. Patient expectations are increasing. Competition in the international market is intensifying. Previously, we used to prepare budgets for the following year towards the end of the year; for the last four years, we have been regularly making mid-year monthly budget adjustments.
Everyone is looking for answers to the same questions; often in their own room, with their own budget, using their own resources. We are constantly reporting to our own board of directors about maintaining the balance of payments.
The question inevitably arises: Since a significant portion of our problems are shared, why are we trying to come up with so many solutions on our own?
When discussing the future of the healthcare sector, I believe the concept of “great convergence” should be addressed precisely around this issue: the collaborative development of hospitals, pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, insurers, health technology and software firms, universities, and investors, complementing each other’s capabilities.
The last century witnessed a kind of explosion in healthcare. Hospitals, insurers, pharmaceutical companies, technology firms, and public institutions specialized. Each established its own institution, its own language, and its own standards. This depth brought us many benefits. Today, however, we are experiencing the opposite trend: no single sector can produce the best results on its own.
The future of competition in healthcare will also depend on how well we manage such convergence.
How many times can we make the same investment?
In my more than 35 years in the hospital industry, I have witnessed firsthand the opening of new hospitals and the growth of healthcare groups. I know the vast ecosystem behind the service you see when you walk through the doors of a hospital: laboratory, imaging, information systems, purchasing, logistics, training, quality, facility management, licensing, and many more functions.
In every new hospital, you don’t just start admitting patients; you also ensure the functioning and orchestration of this invisible world. Today, new layers such as cybersecurity, data management, artificial intelligence, and remote patient monitoring are being added to this world. Expecting every institution to be strong in all of these on its own is becoming an increasingly costly expectation.
According to the OECD’s Health at a Glance 2025 report, the share of health expenditures in GDP in member countries averaged 8.8 percent in 2019 and reached 9.3 percent in 2024. In Türkiye, according to TÜİK (Turkish Statistical Institute) data, the ratio of total health expenditures to GDP increased from 4.6 percent in 2023 to 5.3 percent in 2024. These indicators alone do not reflect the profitability of institutions; however, they clearly reveal the economic importance of resources allocated to health. While allocating more resources, we also need to ask how much health we can produce with the same resources. The OECD’s Tackling Wasteful Spending on Health report provides a striking answer to this question: Approximately one-fifth of health expenditure contributes little or no to good health outcomes. More than 10 percent of hospital expenditures go towards correcting preventable medical errors and hospital-acquired infections. A significant portion of these losses occurs in the gaps between institutions. Instead of neighboring institutions repeatedly building the same infrastructure, is it possible for them to develop shared capacity in specific areas? Could we create shared laboratory infrastructure, training programs, technology validation centers, or procurement solutions?
The first economic question of the great convergence is this: Which costs that we bear separately can we collectively transform into a more efficient investment?
What can I learn from my opponent?
In the business world, the idea of a partnership usually arises when everyone likes each other very much. However, for some partnerships, even agreeing on something isn’t necessary. Acknowledging a common problem is enough.
The MELLODDY project in the pharmaceutical industry is a striking example of this. Ten pharmaceutical companies, including AstraZeneca, Bayer, GSK, and Novartis, developed a structure that enables AI models to learn collaboratively without sharing confidential research data with each other. Using a method called “federated learning,” data remains within the organizations while models can leverage information from different institutions. Companies that compete with each other can collaboratively improve their learning capacity.
This is also a thought-provoking approach for healthcare organizations. Instead of each hospital trying to develop an AI solution limited to its own data, shared learning and validation infrastructures can be established while respecting privacy and security conditions.
The Mayo Clinic Platform provides an example of combining clinical knowledge with technology development. The platform supports the development, validation, and scaling of digital health solutions through anonymized clinical data and collaborations. It demonstrates how a healthcare organization’s impact can extend beyond the services provided within its own buildings.
The opportunity here is significant for Türkiye: If we can more systematically combine the clinical experience of our hospitals with the development capacity of our technology companies, we can jointly bring products and knowledge to the international market.
From shared difficulties to shared capacity.
A more concrete example of convergence can be seen in the supply of medicines.
Civica, a non-profit pharmaceutical company formed by hospitals in the US, focuses on accessibility and continuity of supply for essential generic drugs. According to the company’s September 2025 announcement, it served over 1,400 hospitals. What’s remarkable about this example is that hospitals created production capacity in the face of a shared shortage. Of course, not every joint venture needs to build a pharmaceutical factory. Sometimes a shared inventory management system, a maintenance and repair center, or a joint training academy can be a meaningful starting point.
Human resources are one of the most important areas. The World Health Organization predicts a shortage of approximately 11 million healthcare workers globally by 2030; this shortage is expected to be concentrated particularly in low- and lower-middle-income countries. The transfer of employees between institutions does not increase the total human resource pool. Universities, healthcare organizations, and professional associations need to work together to develop training capacity, provide new skills, and support employee retention. I wonder if we could dedicate some of the energy we spend on recruiting each other’s trained employees to jointly training more people.
Who benefits from staying healthy?
Perhaps the most challenging area of convergence is the meeting of economic incentives.
Hospitals, insurers, physicians, home care organizations, and patients are all part of the same journey. However, when each’s success is evaluated using different criteria, achieving the common goal can become difficult. We need to discuss how to share the value created by a patient avoiding complications, re-hospitalization, or better managing their chronic illness.
According to McKinsey’s analysis, clinical care accounts for only about 15 percent of overall health outcomes. The rest is determined outside the hospital door: in people’s daily lives, insurance coverage, employer schedules, and technological tracking.
Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) operating under the Medicare Shared Savings Program in the U.S. bring service providers together around responsibility for quality and total cost of care. According to CMS’s 2024 performance results, following $4.1 billion in shared savings payments to participants, approximately $2.5 billion in net savings were reported compared to Medicare’s reference spending targets. This is a result from the program’s own calculation framework; it’s not a figure that can be directly generalized to the entire system. However, it’s a strong example for discussing the economic impact of shared goals.
We need a similar approach to preventive health. The fact that the share of preventive services in total health expenditures in the OECD has returned to approximately 3 percent in 2023 raises questions about the relationship between the importance we place on prevention and the resources we allocate to it.
If we want to build a meaningful model for longevity and healthy aging, clinics, insurers, employers, and technology companies need to come together around measurable health benefits. The success of this collaboration should be visible in people’s daily lives and health outcomes.
Türkiye’s opportunity to grow together.
We can initiate the great convergence for Türkiye with concrete projects.
We are already seeing signs of this. In May 2026, Turkcell’s 5G infrastructure, Istanbul University Faculty of Medicine, Muş State Hospital, and the Ibn-i Sina robot from the domestic manufacturer ELMED came together in a kidney stone surgery performed approximately 1,500 kilometers apart. A telecommunications company, a university, a public hospital, and domestic industry sat at the same table for the same patient. Our infrastructure is also strong: Turkey rose from 26th in the world rankings for clinical research in 2019 to 20th in 2025.
A group of healthcare organizations can establish a shared AI validation capacity. Hospitals and local software companies can jointly export clinically proven solutions. Insurers, hospitals, and home care organizations can monitor the total cost and outcomes of care for a specific patient group. In international patient services, treatment, rehabilitation, and post-return follow-up can be designed within the same quality framework. This expands the value we offer in global competition: a healthcare ecosystem capable of managing treatment before and after, measuring outcomes, and improving technology.
However, forming a partnership doesn’t automatically mean that shared value is being created. Initially, the answers to these questions must be clear: Who will invest? Who will make the decisions? How will the risk be shared? Who will benefit from the generated profits? What will the patient gain? We cannot measure success by the number of meetings. Are waiting times shortening? Are complications decreasing? Is the workload on employees lightening? Is the total cost of care decreasing? Are we generating more value in the international market? We must also not leave one question off the table: Will convergence benefit the patient and the system, or will it only increase the bargaining power of certain institutions? The legitimacy of the collaboration lies in how the value it produces is shared.
Hospital management teaches us a very simple lesson every day: even the best doctor alone cannot create a good hospital. The result is the collaboration of nurses, technicians, software, laboratories, administrators, and many others. Now we need to bring this same understanding to institutions.
The future competitiveness of healthcare will stem not only from what an organization possesses, but also from what it achieves together with others.
