Key Development
Vietnam’s healthcare expenditure has been projected to rise from roughly $17.4 billion in 2019 to an estimated $27.5 billion in 2025 and $34.1 billion by 2028. But more spending does not automatically mean more healthcare value.
VTC News attributes the $34.1 billion projection to Dr. Ong The Due at a Health Strategy and Policy Institute seminar in late 2025. It should therefore be treated as a market forecast rather than an audited national expenditure figure. The direction of travel, however, is clear: Vietnam is simultaneously increasing health investment and building digital infrastructure. Parliament has approved the 2026–2035 National Target Program for healthcare, population and development, while the Ministry of Health aims for electronic medical records across all healthcare facilities by 2030.
Supply remains highly internationalized. Roughly 90% of medical equipment is imported, while BMI data cited by the U.S. International Trade Administration forecast Vietnam’s medical-device market growing from $1.9 billion in 2024 to $2.8 billion by 2029.
Why It Matters
- Rapid spending growth creates opportunity — but raises the hurdle for measurable return on investment.
- Digital infrastructure is becoming core healthcare infrastructure. By January 2026, the Ministry of Health reported 1,192 hospitals using electronic medical records and more than 30 million electronic health records on VNeID.
- Import dependence means acquiring technology is different from sustainably operating it. Maintenance, consumables, cybersecurity, integration and local technical support matter.
- Policy is shifting toward prevention and longitudinal health management, increasing the value of connected data across the patient lifecycle.
Healthcare Insight Analysis
Healthcare Insight believes the central risk in Vietnam’s next healthcare-investment cycle is digitalization without productivity.
Hospitals can purchase AI applications, PACS platforms, laboratory automation, robotic systems and advanced diagnostics.
But if those technologies sit in separate data environments, require physicians to enter information repeatedly and cannot exchange patient data across facilities, technology expenditure increases without equivalent improvement in system capacity.
The right question is therefore not:
“How advanced is the technology?”
It is:
“How much friction does it remove from the patient pathway?”
AI-enabled imaging creates value when it increases reporting throughput, shortens turnaround times or identifies high-risk patients earlier.
Electronic records create value when they reduce duplicate testing, support clinical decisions and allow information to move with patients across facilities.
Molecular diagnostics create value when results reliably change treatment decisions.
This is the difference between technology procurement and a technology-enabled operating model.
Vietnam already has a meaningful clinical foundation. Its UHC service coverage index reached 71 in 2023 — equal to the global level, although still below Thailand’s 82.
That suggests technology is not entering an empty healthcare market. It is being layered onto an existing delivery system with substantial clinical capability, but uneven access and infrastructure.
This makes integration more important than novelty.
Import dependence also changes investment economics.
A lower-priced machine with frequent downtime, expensive proprietary consumables and poor EMR connectivity may produce a higher lifetime cost than a more expensive system with reliable uptime, local servicing and interoperable data.
Hospitals therefore need to move from measuring acquisition cost toward cost per usable clinical capacity.
This principle becomes even more important as Vietnam expands preventive screening.
Scaling screening without linking abnormal findings to referral, diagnosis and treatment can create more testing without better outcomes.
Technology must connect the entire funnel:
identify → diagnose → refer → treat → follow up.
Otherwise digital growth simply generates more data.
Market Implications
Hospitals: technology procurement should increasingly be tied to throughput, uptime, integration and time-to-treatment.
Medtech companies: competitive advantage will move from equipment sales toward lifecycle services, interoperability and local technical support.
AI and digital health: standalone algorithms will have limited strategic defensibility; workflow integration and access to high-quality longitudinal data will matter more.
Investors: healthcare-revenue growth should not be confused with healthcare-productivity growth.
ANALYTICAL MATRIX
| Dimension | Current Signal | Opportunity | Better KPI |
| Spending | $34.1bn forecast for 2028 | Expand capacity | Cost per outcome |
| Medtech | ~90% imported | Access advanced technology | Uptime, lifecycle cost |
| EMR | 1,192 hospitals by Jan 2026 | Longitudinal data | Interoperability |
| AI | Expanding use cases | Increase throughput | Time saved per case |
| Prevention | Growing policy priority | Earlier detection | Detection-to-treatment |
If Vietnam only spends more, its healthcare market will become larger.
If that investment creates interoperable data, higher productivity and faster access to the right care, its healthcare system will become stronger.
That is why $34.1 billion should not be the ultimate KPI. The more important question is how much real healthcare capacity each additional billion dollars creates.