Bharat Digital HealthCare Summit 2024-A review

At a moment in time when digital technologies and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are redefining entire industries, the world of healthcare cannot remain untouched. This is especially evident in India when we are leapfrogging existing analog health systems straight into the Digital Era – thereby also bringing new innovations for the world to follow.

In this backdrop, Bharat Exhibitions organized the first edition of Bharat Digital HealthCare Summit 2024 on 6th April 2024 at Hotel The Suryaa, New Delhi. Key leaders, innovators, developers, and experts from the healthcare and technology sectors converged to share their thoughts, experiences and predictions for the “future of health”.

Deloitte the knowledge partner for the summit released a detailed study on the “Future of Health in India” where it noted: In the coming decade, health care delivery in India is expected to be driven by technological advancements and digital health adoption amongst providers and patients. This is likely to be influenced by a mindset shift, technical developments, infrastructure development, government incentives, and other factors.

Shashi Dharan, Managing Director, Bharat Exhibitions delivered the welcome address. “Today, I stand to shed light on the revolutionary emergence of digital health solutions and how they are poised to positively impact the lives of rural populations around India. In an era where technology continues to advance at an unprecedented rate, the intersection of healthcare and digital innovation has the potential to bridge the gap between urban and rural healthcare services, ultimately transforming the lives of those living in remote areas”.

Fr. George P.A., Director, Holy Family Hospital in his speech emphasised on Digital health as a rapidly growing field with exciting opportunities for innovation and improvement in healthcare delivery. “The goal of digital health is to make healthcare more efficient, accessible, and effective, by leveraging the power of technology. Collect, analyze, store and share health data more easily”. Holy Family at the cutting edge in leveraging the latest digital technology for health interventions using connected devices to improve outcomes and delivery.

The Future of Health report spoke about a paradigm shift in the mind of the customer. Though healthcare expenditure has doubled, the rural urban divide continues to prevail. But there is a positive trend towards designing digital tools in-house by large service players across web, mobile, and wearable technologies. Assisting this shift are Generative AI and interoperability in this journey.

Generative AI can use medical images and patient data to create improved diagnostic tools and medical imaging algorithms. Its synthetic data, can help health care practitioners to deliver a wider range of information.

The Software Technology Parks of India (STPI) of India is a key player in the new MedTech and Healthtech innovations coming out of this country. The event Guest of Honour, Arvind Kumar, Director General, STPI at the outset thanked the backbone of the health system in the country, that is, the nursing community – which will be the final last mile user of many of the digital tools for patient monitoring and continued health care delivery.

“Today, data analytics is changing the very foundations of the healthcare sector in the country,” he said. “The use of AI, ML and deep tech is the shift we are witnessing and I am sure India is going to lead it – especially so because STPI itself is at the forefront of encouraging this innovation.

“We need to create new technology devices for senior citizens of the country so that they get the best benefit of technology in the healthcare,” he added. Generative AI uses produced medical images and patient data to create improved diagnostic tools and medical imaging algorithms. By producing synthetic data, researchers and health care practitioners can have access to a wider range of information, resulting in specialised and precise medical treatments.

A Robert Jerard Ravi predicted that wearables will replace smart phones, in the near future.

The Indian Government is doing a lot in the field of digital health. For example, Ayushman Bharat Mission is helping in creating a framework much like the UPI has done in Fintech. “It is taking Indian healthcare to the next level,” said Dr Upasana Arora, Managing Director, Yashoda Super Specialty Hospitals, Ghaziabad, who is also on the Ayushman and ABHA committees for Digital Health.

The future of health in india
Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM):

• A scheme that promotes secure health data exchange across the health ecosystem. It includes components such as a health ID, Unified Health Interface, personal health records, and registries for health professionals and facilities.
• The government launched a Digital Health Incentive Scheme (DHIS) in January 2023 to boost ABDM adoption, with incentives of up to INR 40 million for health facilities, based on the number of health records they created and linked to the ABHA ID. Further, the Union Budget 2023 allocated INR 3.41 billion to the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission, which was, 70.52 percent higher than the previous year’s allocation.

e-Sanjeevani:

• India’s free, cloud-based, population-scale telemedicine platform enables audio-video consultations between patients and providers and has achieved success in bridging the rural-urban health divide by enabling health care access in remote areas.
• As of date, the initiative has completed ~90 million teleconsultations, onboarded ~0.2 million providers, and offered a record ~0.4 million OPD consultations in a single day.

National Health Stack (NHS):

• This is a digital infrastructure that will aid the successful implementation of future government health projects by gathering detailed health care data. It will also enable decision makers to identify fraud in an efficient manner.

How policy can be a catalyst was underlined by Cdr. Navneet Bali, Chief Executive Officer, ClearMedi Healthcare: “Never discount the power of policy interventions we are gradually marching towards the golden era of healthcare in the country”.

“Innovation, is happening at an unprecedented scale but its application to improve the health of populations remains largely untapped,” said Fr. Sabu P.L, Director, Fatima Hospital Gorakhpur, a hub for healthcare innovation. He also referred to RUPCHA (Rajasthan Uttar Pradesh Catholic Health Association) stating, ‘Since its inception, it has been growing steadily and playing an effective role in the promotion of the comprehensive and holistic process of community health in the region”.

While the digital hype is taking center stage, the role of the underlying connectivity will determine the true success as transfer of data and communication will be a key determinant. Touching on this point, Guest of Honour, A. Robert Jerard Ravi, DDG (S.R.I.), Department of Telecommunications, Ministry of Communications of the Summit said, “6G will play a pivotal role in the healthcare sector of India. The 3 main pillars of digital health are afforadability, availability, decentralization and implementation and we have to see how these pillars fit into the demography of the country so that digital health is a real time success.”

He also predicted that wearables will replace smart phones, in the near future. While this will be broadly an urban phenomena, for remote areas decentralization will be the key factor.

Speaking on the occasion, Dr Sumit Ray, Medical Director, Holy Family Hospital mentioned that, “AI can help in intensive medical care. The main goal is to improve the focus of digital health so that at the end of the day it’s the patient who benefits and gets the best out of it. The healthcare domain, specially the doctors, nurses or what I must say the human touch should not over run by technology”.

One of the innovative startups from the STPI stable is LogicBoots which was present at the event. Amit Singh, CEO and Founder, LogicBoots Pvt Ltd spoke on the importance of digital health startups.

Beyond technology-enabled services or online consultation platforms, digital is prioritising accuracy, efficiency, and innovative solutions to disrupt the sector with cost-effective strategies to promote health equity.

“We are working on manufacturing devices which are not available in the country so far, for example the digital stethoscope. We are also working on nano technology” he said.

Other eminent speakers during the Summit were Dr Susil Kumar Meher, Head IT, AIIMS Delhi, Dr Amitabh Yaduvanshi, Coordinator and Head of Cardiology, Holy Family Hospital, Prashant Oberoi, Director, India & SAARC, Norden Communication, Dr Amit Swaroop, Head Business Development, STEMZ Healthcare, Sarath Anand Jupalli, Managing Director, Shivam Medisoft, Dr Raunaq Pradhan, Product Lead, National Health Authority (NHA), Dr P.N. Singh, Clinician In-charge & Senior Consultant, Holy Family Hospital, Arun Agarwal, Founder, JANITRI, Neha Rastogi, Founder & COO, Agatsa, Ashwin Amarapur, Founder & CEO, Aikenist Technologies, Nyamat Bindra, Lead, North Operations, Salcit Technologies, Dr Seema Singh, Founder, Unconsult, Prashant Singh, Senior Associate Director, KPMG India, Arun Goyal, Director & CIO, Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, Praveen Bist, CIO, Amrita Hospitals, Pushkal Mishra, Chief Information Security Officer, Dr. Lal PathLabs and Srinivasulu Thayam, CTO, Aravind Eye Care System.

The summit was partnered by Holy Family Hospital, Norden Communication, Stemz Healthcare, DeAsh Trade Net, Shivam Medisoft, Techspire Services Pvt Ltd, Software Technology Parks of India, MedTech, Janitri, Swaasa by Salcit, Agatsa, Aikenist, Orthfit, LMES Techno Consultancy LLP, Medical Buyer, Deloitte India, Broadband India Forum, RUPCHA, National Health Authority, Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology and Digital India.
MB Bureau