First cancer specialty hospital in Philippines to rise in 2023

October 28, 2022 - 12:29 PM
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Photo shows the design of Healthway Cancer Care Hospital (Ayala Corporation/Facebook)

The country’s first dedicated specialty cancer hospital will open in Ayala Land’s Arca South development in Taguig City next year.

The 100-bed Healthway Cancer Care Hospital is Ayala Group’s response to the Cancer Control Act, which paved the way for the private sector to establish cancer specialty facilities to support the program.

“Cancer is a critical public health problem with an enormous impact on patients, the families, and the healthcare system at large. There is an urgent need to develop sustainable solutions. We need to increase awareness of the disease through patient education, improve the timeliness of diagnosis through rigorous screening programs, and minimize out-of-pocket cancer expenses through affordable cancer care,” said Fernando Zobel de Ayala, Chairman of the Board of Ayala Healthcare Holdings, Inc

To ensure the quality of healthcare service that the hospital will be providing, it partnered with Siemens Healthineers, a German-based leading medical technology company. 

This partnership seeks to strengthen the country’s cancer care needs through improved delivery of patient care using advanced medical technology and digitalization.

Specifically, Siemens Healthineers will support the hospital by integrating suitable diagnostic and therapy systems focused on comprehensive cancer care, from medical imaging to image-guided surgery and intervention, as well as radiation therapy.

“Healthway Cancer Care Hospital aims to be the go-to facility service provider for all cancer patients. And since each patient has a unique medical need, with our collaboration with Siemens Healthineers, we will be able to deliver the premium level of precision in diagnosis, personalized care and experience to each patient,” the hospital’s president and CEO Jaime Ysmael said.

“Accurate and timely diagnosis needed for the treatment of their condition is critical to the patient’s treatment journey, and this is our key focus in our patient care pathway,” he continued. 

Based on a study by the University of the Philippines’ Institute of Human Genetics, four Filipinos die of cancer every hour or 96 cancer patients every day. Meanwhile, 189 of every 100,000 Filipinos are affected by cancer.