Technologies To Drive Indian Healthcare Industry

Healthcare in India, especially the private healthcare, has changed (for the better) tremendously in the last nearly twenty years, and this change has been even much fast-paced and dynamic in the last few years.

Providing appropriate healthcare to about 1.35 billion people is definitely a challenging task, and this is even more challenging when we know that nearly 70 percent of the in-patient care is provided by private healthcare providers in our country.

While the future strategy for healthcare, especially private healthcare, has to be based on many key analyses and aspects, as a manager in healthcare, I believe we need to keep looking at alternatives to the high-cost factors in managing the show in hospitals, and most importantly, this has to be done without compromising on the quality and the patient care. End of the day, patient care remains the top priority for all of us, irrespective of any other factor.

Hence, optimization of resources is absolutely a necessity and a need for providing the right patient care and this optimization has to include the three “M”s, i.e., men, machine, and materials. In many organizations, over a period of time, these three aspects keep growing out of context as the continuous optimization gets missed as the organizations grow. However, it is the need of the hour to keep reviewing these factors to get the best out of these, both in terms of effectiveness/quality and the optimization of growing cost of the care.

While all these factors will continue to be a part of the strategy, one big aspect, where I believe any healthcare organization cannot afford to lose sight, is the patient satisfaction. This one big factor constantly keeps getting overlooked by most of the healthcare players. We cannot take our eyes off and focus away from this, because not only does a satisfied patient help in creating our brand image, but he also gives a strong message that our teams, our employees, are satisfied with us. As it is a known fact, only a satisfied employee can make a patient satisfied! Hence, if we focus on our patients’ satisfaction, we will realize, we are also focusing on our employees’ satisfaction and that is what is needed in any industry to keep our teams happy!

With the advancement of technology, rising costs of care, shortage of clinical talent, etc., the private healthcare has to price the care at a level so as to meet the basic expenses to maintain the committed standard, while the government is understandably committed toward bringing the price to a more affordable level for the larger population.

Accessibility to proper healthcare by the larger population is another challenge currently. And hence, at some point of time, the government might also like to spread the private healthcare to the interior parts of the country, as against the current scenario where the private healthcare institutes are primarily based out of major cities only.

In the years to come, the role of information technology will be very vital, which also means the usage of mobiles/computers for virtual consultations, telemedicine, importance of preventive health checks, etc., is only going to scale up. Healthcare industry and the infrastructure in our country should better gear up fast for this, since that day does not seem to be very far off from today!

One more sector that must continue making a big contribution toward healthcare advancement is biomedical technological advancements. While this is ongoing, there is an equal need to bring the costs in line with various government schemes like Ayushman Bharat so that infrastructure costs are also more in line for the private healthcare providers and, therefore, helping to encourage more participation of private healthcare facilities in such government-sponsored schemes.

To summarize, the future of Indian healthcare (read private) lies primarily on information technology, de-segregation of tertiary care facilities to the interior parts of the country, continuous technological advancement of the biomedical equipment with appropriate cost containment, focus on resource optimization, and the patient satisfaction. These key factors shall formulate the prime pillars of the glorious healthcare scenario in our country in the years to come.