In an exclusive interview, Andrey Abreu, CTO of MV, Brazil’s largest medical information company, talks Intelligent CIO LATAM through the transformative impact of MV’s partnership with Huawei Cloud on healthcare services in Latin America.
With its main operation based in Brazil, MV aims to overcome the technological lock-in challenges it faced in its long-term partnership with a previous vendor, by transitioning to Huawei’s more competitive and reliable cloud solutions.
Andrey Abreu, MV CTO, notes that Huawei Cloud’s superior response speed and reliability have significantly enhanced MV’s service capabilities, particularly in the emerging Health-as-a-Service sector.
The partnership also empowers MV to bridge the digital gap in the Latin American healthcare sector through Artificial Intelligence and cloud technology.
While still in its structuring phase, the collaboration aims to benefit not just hospitals but the broader healthcare ecosystem, including doctors and nurses who are grappling with technological adoption amid the accelerated changes brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The company is optimistic about receiving positive feedback in 2024 as it continues to create appealing and efficient offerings for its growing customer base.
Here Andrey Abreu answers our questions about his company’s partnership with Huawei Cloud.
Can you elaborate on how Huawei Cloud specifically enhances MV’s capabilities in providing health services across the Latin America region?
MV has clients in 10 countries in Latin America. However, our main operation is in Brazil, where we have 2,000 clients using our solution. I believe that the partnership with Huawei has created the possibility to offer our services to a global market, as we have solutions for the entire hospital chain.
We believe we can integrate our entire health data ecosystem in Brazil – which is a large and advanced ecosystem – with AI and Huawei’s cloud technology to enhance the Latin American market. This enables us to create an offering for the global market because, from a digital perspective, there is a significant gap in the healthcare sector in this market.
What challenges did MV face in the Latin America market before adopting Huawei Cloud solutions?
We had a partnership with Oracle for 30 years. The main challenge always was the technological lock-in. We have a significant share of medium and large hospitals in Brazil, but we couldn’t reach small hospitals in the country because the price wasn’t very attractive. These prices were unfavorable due to the infrastructure, our previous vendor’s license and other factors necessary to ensure good quality. This was our major issue in expanding our market share both domestically and internationally.
We believe that with the partnership we have with Huawei, we managed to create an attractive offering at a competitive price. We achieved a fair price and a reliable environment with the quality we need. I believe this partnership broke the barrier we had with our previous database.
Today, we have two projects with Huawei. The first one utilizes Huawei Cloud, and the second one migrated from our previous vendor to Huawei GaussDB, an enterprise-class AI-Native distributed database that uses Massively Parallel Processing (MPP) architecture. This database is used worldwide, including by institutions like the Bank of China. We believe that with Huawei GaussDB, we are creating an appealing offering for our small customers.
Are there any particular features of Huawei Cloud that make it a preferred choice for delivering Health-as-a-Service?
Huawei Cloud is not a fully-fledged cloud when compared to AWS or Google. However, they have a highly reliable cloud. We tested this reliability and received excellent feedback from these tests. The Huawei Cloud infrastructure showed a response speed twice as fast as our previous vendor, for instance. In comparison, Huawei Cloud is a much more reliable and faster platform. Our solution performs exceptionally well with Huawei Cloud.
How has this collaboration with Huawei impacted the speed or efficiency of services offered by MV?
We believe that this new offering has provided significant efficiency for our customers. The price is advantageous for small, medium and large customers. However, it’s not just about the price. The quality is also better. We can enhance the quality of the sets at a lower cost. This is a key point.
How do you see this partnership benefiting other players in the healthcare ecosystem, such as doctors and nurses?
The healthcare market has evolved. The COVID-19 pandemic brought about situations that accelerated this market. However, the pandemic also raised many questions in the minds of doctors – like how to use these technologies or incorporate them into their routines. It’s not easy for a doctor who was used to using pen and paper to adopt new technologies to assist them. For example, using AI to make a diagnosis or even helping them guide a patient with health insurance. The main challenge lies in the minds of doctors.
There is a need to increase gains, whether in productivity or financial situations, but it’s also necessary to realize that in their daily routines, technology will always assist them. They still believe that technology will replace them, and this is a problem.
What feedback have you received from patients and healthcare providers regarding the services powered by Huawei Cloud?
It’s too early to say anything because our partnership is in a structuring phase for market entry. We don’t have customers using the services yet, but I believe that 2024 will be a good year with positive results to analyze. Right now, it’s still challenging to obtain real feedback from our customers.
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