Six in 10 patients delay treatment due to cost anxiety.

Hong Kong’s healthcare sector is shifting focus to pricing transparency, clinical trial capacity, and biotech infrastructure as insurers, hospitals, and life science firms respond to rising cost uncertainty and gaps in drug development capacity.

Arjan Toor, CEO, Health at Prudential plc, said affordability concerns are driven less by the cost of treatment and more by a lack of clarity upfront, often causing people to delay getting care.

“It’s not necessarily about the absolute expense, but it’s more about the uncertainty that people face, not knowing what the treatment will cost, what is covered by insurance, and ultimately what they may need to pay out of their own pocket,” he said in an interview.

Six in 10 patients in Hong Kong delay treatment due to concerns about cost, Toor said, citing Prudential’s Patient Voices research, which surveyed more than 4,200 patients across four Asian markets. More than half of the respondents in Hong Kong also said their final bills were higher than they had initially anticipated.

Hong Kong’s medical cost inflation is forecast to reach 9.9% in 2026, according to Mercer Marsh Benefits, part of Marsh & McLennan Companies, Inc., Asia posted the highest projected medical trend rate globally in 2025 at 13%, it pointed out.

Kwok Quek Sin, group chief business technology officer at IHH Healthcare Berhad, said artificial intelligence (AI) is being used to improve fee estimates, insurance coverage visibility, and out-of-pocket cost planning.

“Every time a patient is going to hospital, besides worrying about their own health, they have to worry about the cost as well,” he said in a separate interview.

He said AI should be deployed as an operational tool rather than a trend-driven investment, with a focus on clinical outcomes, hospital efficiency, and cost control.

Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu said at the Asia Summit on Global Health in May the key issue has shifted to whether healthcare technology could be turned into tools that are clinically useful, commercially viable, and affordable at scale.

He said Hong Kong plans to expand clinical trial capacity and improve the pathway from research to commercial application. He pointed to the Greater Bay Area International Clinical Trial Institute, operated by the University of Hong Kong, as part of that effort.

The government’s 2026-2027 budget outlined a “One plus Three” life and health technology research framework centred on Hetao Hong Kong Park, whilst the 2025 policy address proposed a medical product regulator and faster drug approval pathways.

Zhu Tian, co-founder and CEO at GenEditBio Ltd., said Hong Kong still lacks shared contract manufacturing capacity for advanced therapies.

“For biological products, the process is a product,” Zhu said. “So we have to spend a lot of resources and time on chemistry, manufacturing, and control advancement and optimisation.”

She said shared manufacturing facilities in Hetao could help startups move from lab research into early-stage human trials.

Zhu added that regulatory differences across markets and uneven capital conditions remain key constraints for cell and gene therapy developers.

“[We need] to make sure that we have enough capital,” Zhu said. “The capital market environment still has some uncertainty, so for different stages of biotech, the exit strategy has to be more balanced.”