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Sailing through the pandemic and beyond with MedTech and IVD industry

MedTech and IVD industry are no exception to disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic that floundered our economy. Yet, these industries have done a brilliant job in terms of delivery of solutions, from the perspective of devices, connectivity or even tests like RT-PCR pertinent to COVID-19 pandemic in the past whole year and still continue to do so.

The pandemic forced these industries to garner support from their ancillary vendors too. The Make in India concept and the urgency, including demand, mushroomed the growth of local companies for smaller requirements.

MedTech and IVD industries did see a boom for their products pertinent to the pandemic and other infectious disease or secondary infections related to COVID-19 (during COVID-19 infection or post COVID-19 infection, during patient recovery).

At the same time, they also took a hit on their main and high value devices like implants, prosthesis, stents etc., as the once-upon-a-time high value surgeries were not performed due to the lockdown or were performed in absolute emergency. This led to a financial crisis in the hospital industry as well as the MedTech industry. The road to financial recovery is going to be too
long!

With the advent of COVID-19 vaccine, the pandemic will slowly phase out, but the infection will still stay, may be for a few months or years and the world will go back to the normal stage. This will be good news to the MedTech and IVD industry. With most people being vaccinated, the pandemic coming to an end, the high value treatments will be back in demand, and the elective surgeries pertinent to heart, lungs etc. would be regain pace.

But, at the same time the demand for COVID-19 related items too would be in place, though in a small percentage.

For the IVD industry, the PCR, the NGC’s and genetic testing would be big business opportunities to continue for other infectious diseases like HIV etc., and for the non-infectious diseases related tests, like genetic tests, cytology tests, and immunoassays.

In short, as the pandemic slowly phases out, the pressure on MedTech and IVD industry to deliver at a faster pace will still continue, for increased production capacity and as well as faster and better output.

At PD Hinduja Hospital, on the MedTech aspect, we are trying out several new devices. We are in an advanced stage of testing of an electronic device which combines neuroscience, biosensing, engineering, mixed reality, and Artificial Intelligence to enhance the recovery potential of patients with neurological diseases like stroke. We have the most advanced integrated robotic system, the only hospital in western India with the latest Leksell Gamma Knife Perfexion to perform non-invasive complex brain surgeries; PET CT, SPECT with gamma camera for the most accurate diagnosis of cancer and other diseases and many more.

MedTech is also being used to enhance patient experience like use of chatbots across website and WhatsApp, automatic scheduling of patient in health-check up for faster turnaround times, special Doxper pens, which automatically digitize the doctor prescriptions and more.

We have a fully integrated system for teleconsulting, where the patient can book online or via call center, register and pay on-line and the doctors can view patient past records electronically also.
We are enhancing our lab facilities and are setting up a standalone exclusive facility for the same, where focus will be on areas like research on IVD, international collaborations, molecular genome and infection disease testing with NGS, and proteomics.

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