MedTech industry advancement during the pandemic

Indian healthcare industry transformed dramatically during the COVID pandemic and achieved great heights which was stagnant for decades. The new transformed industry catering to several strategic partners not only helps in improving businesses but helps in better patient care starting from telemedicine to Home based ICU at the time when hospitals were short of beds, overburdened healthcare workers and limited medical equipment. Technology plays a major role in mitigating such disasters and aids in early recovery.

Technology has brought patients and service providers closer to each other thus improving shared decision making for diagnosis and treatment. This also led to rapid adoption of virtual healthcare facilities benefitting several small-scale healthcare digital startups, several digital innovations like use of self-recording and monitoring devices; the push for interoperable data and data analytics use leading to better research and development options; and unprecedented public-private collaborations in vaccine and therapeutics development. The use of healthcare technology has the potential of increasing access, significantly reducing the burden of disease and the load on healthcare delivery services through early diagnosis, better clinical outcomes, less invasive procedures and shorter recovery times.

Even though we have made several advancements, but we still are far behind the westernized countries where hospitals are moving toward completely paperless system in a more secured environment. As there is more data sharing between the organizations and other industry stake holders, it is important to have data stored on secured servers and have adequate interoperability without posing a risk to the patients’ data and healthcare organizations should demonstrate reliability, transparency, and most importantly, a sense of empathy in how they operate.

Lately, healthcare organizations have started enabling health IT systems powered by cloud and data analytics tools to enable real-time, smart digital health using interoperable data and deep learning capabilities, always on biosensors, and behavioral research to shape consumer beliefs and actions. These AI based technologies are better tailored for providing personalized care to patients with real time intervention capabilities and providing behavioral nudges.

During the pandemic, it was seen that the virtual visits to a clinician office has increased, and consumers are willing for future virtual visits as well, however it has been noticed in several instances that those visits are either not satisfactory or lack the personal touch with the clinicians. This can be improved by training healthcare personnel in building virtual interpersonal relationships and improving the quality of digital platforms to provide better virtual visit experience to the consumer.

The initial setup cost of healthcare technology industry may be high due to the need for better framework and niche areas for medical devices and instrumentations, but it can provide a solid return on investment within a short period of time as the marking is growing exponentially and when implemented correctly, can help in improving healthcare delivery and patient empowerment. Government is also working on PPP model to improve patient outcomes by implementing several health care IT features including digitalization of patient records by using EHR platforms.

The Indian healthcare market specifically in the technology part is still small and expanding as per needs and demands of the consumer. This is nascent and highly fragmented with limited indigenous manufacturing; our imports constitute over 75 percent of the estimated USD 2.75 billion market. An important point to improve use of technology is its affordability, accessibility, awareness, and availability and the most important is the innovation which we are way far behind the developed countries and paying a hefty amount on purchasing patented products. Medical technology innovation can make modern care accessible, available, and affordable to all by lowering the cost of equipment and services. Several business models using technology can also aid in indirect patient care which includes manufacturing, distribution, marketing of different services to stakeholders. This has also improved our medical tourism even at the times when the countries were under the effect of lock down due to coronavirus.