Healthcare

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 05 sep 2015

Shortage of specialized care is one of the critical challenges that India's healthcare system is currently grappling with. As affluence and awareness of Indian population increases, the demand for better specialist-monitored healthcare is expected to rise. India's specialist availability data for selected fields per 1 lakh population is - Cardiologist (5000), Dermatologist (7000), Radiologist (10000), Ophthalmologist (11000). Although US too has shortages in terms of specialists, but the number of specialists available is far better when compared to India - Cardiologist (31500), Dermatologist (10000), Radiologist (25000), Ophthalmologist (19000). So how is India going to tackle the challenge of specialist shortages? Dave Richards of Unitus Seed Fund, is optimistic about the transformative changes that mobile technologies will bring to India's healthcare landscape. He explains five main factors that need to be addressed through technological interventions - (1) Services of specialists must not only accessible, but also affordable to both urban and rural India. (2) Services must be from a trustworthy source. (3) Convenience is a major factor for consumers. (4) Providing consultation needs to be convenient for specialists. (5) Specialists need to earn money. According to him, combination of ubiquitous smartphones and high-speed data networks can create a large-scale affordable platform for delivering healthcare services. Diagnostic services is one area that can be substantially transformed through technological advancements and innovatons - Cardiac Care: Transmitting an ECG image through a smart device to on-demand cardiologist; Dermatology: 85% of skin issues can be fully diagnosed by a dermatologist with a photo taken by a smartphone; Radiology: CT scans, X-rays, ultrasounds etc can be captured by technician and then transmitted to remote radiologists; Ophthalmology: Eye screaning for diseases and refraction issues can now be done by technicians using low-cost devices, routed to ophthalmologists via mobile networks. Read on...

Forbes: The smart way of providing affordable health care
Author: Dave Richards

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 31 aug 2015

India's healthcare has various systemic challenges that include lack of specialist rural care, doctor-patient ratio less than the WHO prescribed figure of 1:1000, long wait times and less time available for doctor consultation. Moreover the rise of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) is a cause of serious concern. Anil Kumar, Founder & CEO of SmartRx, explains how technologies like cloud services, wearable devices, internet of things (IoT) can tackle some of these challenges and mentions four areas where healthcare transformation is happening in India with a promise of better prospects in future - (1) Improve Access: Online appointments and remote consultations. (2) Care Delivery: Post-discharge care and patient monitoring; Access to health reports and data. (3) Distribution: Home health services; Delivery of medicines and diagnostics services. (4) Health Management: Wellness apps and tools; Disease management and niche online communities; Personal health devices and wearables. Read on...

iamWire: Healthcare Transformation in India Through Technology
Author: Anil Kumar

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 29 jul 2015

The US-India Business Council (USIBC) expects collaborative opportunities between India and US in the medical devices sector. This will boost investments and skilled human resources to the sector. USIBC seeks from the Indian government to remove barriers to doing business in India and proposes a separate regulatory framework for medical devices, that are currently considered as pharmaceuticals under the Drug and Cosmetics Act of India. It estimates the Indian medical devices industry to grow from the current US$ 4.4 billion (4th largest in Asia) to US$ 7 billion by 2016. 'Make in India' have potential to drive the sector through innovation and investments and developing an ecosystem for medical devices industry. According to Maulik Nanavaty, SVP of Boston Scientific and the head of the USIBC delegation visiting India, 'India has made considerable strides in developing innovative industries across a number of sectors and maintains strong potential to do the same in medical devices.' USIBC Director and Legal Counsel Amy Hariani says, 'Medical devices industry is going through rapid transformation in India and is projected to grow at a higher rate as health insurance becomes more widely available and the country's consumers continue to demand better healthcare services.' Read on...

Moneycontrol: Indian medical device industry can grow to $7bn by 2016: USIBC
Author: NA

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 29 jul 2015

According to the recent report by National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC), India's healthcare sector is expected to grow to Rs. 9.64 lakh crore by 2017 while the incremental workforce requirement is estimated to reach 74 lakh in 2022. In 2013 healthcare human resources requirement figure was 35.9 lakh. There are 11 lakh allied healthcare professionals in diverse fields and 6.21 lakh allopathic doctors and the sector is still quite short of the current demand. The report further states that there are only 356 registered medical institutions with the total admission capacity of 45000 at undergraduate level and about 24000 at post-graduate level. Dilip Chenoy, MD and CEO of NSDC, says 'There is a need for both qualitative and quantitative skill development initiatives in the healthcare sector. We also need to focus heavily on upgrading technical skills of the workforce for advanced healthcare services.' Read on...

The Economic Times: India's healthcare sector to require 74 lakh employees by 2022: NSDC
Author: NA

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 18 may 2015

According to Dr. S. Ayyappan, Secretary of Department of Agricultural Research & Education (DARE) and Director General of Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), 'Multidisciplinary research and applications are required to improve agriculture in India.' He suggests, 'The future of India and the world lay in everyone becoming interested in the outcomes of agriculture, since it's everybody's business.' Vijay Chandru, Chairman and CEO of Strand Life Sciences, says 'Innovations are happening in genome sequencing and it might soon become personalized and a precise way of diagnosing diseases. There is need for biologists, bioinformaticians and information scientists to collaborate in this regard.' Read on...

The Hindu: Research needed to improve agriculture, says expert
Author: NA

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 10 may 2015

Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) like cancer, diabetes, chronic respiratory diseases and cardiovascular disease, are a major healthcare concern for India. They cause more than 60% of deaths and amount to 70% of healthcare spending. Health economist Dr. Kenneth Thorpe, chairman of Partnership to Fight Chronic Disease, is working with Indian government to develop a policy framework to effectively tackle India's healthcare issues and concerns. According to him, 'It's got to be public-private partnership (PPP). So today, India spends about 4% of its GDP on healthcare. About 1.5% of that is the government and the rest is private. So we just need to scale that up - probably proportionally to something like 5-6% of GDP.' He further adds, 'We really need to build up the primary care infrastructure. We need more manpower, more hospital beds, but we really need capacity - building up primary care clinics, primary care models that really deal with identifying chronic disease, preventing it and managing it...The government has to play a role in funding, particularly low-income populations - the poor that live in rural areas, urban poor...The government's got to play a leadership role...We need to sort of change the way that healthcare services are paid for. So today in India, 60 percent of spending is out of pocket. So we need to change that from out-of-pocket buying to something like a primary care package (subscription) or an insurance product.' Read on...

Reuters: Primary care centres key to reforming healthcare in India - Health economist Kenneth Thorpe
Authors: David Lalmalsawma, Robert MacMillan

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 08 mar 2015

The pharmaceutical industry in India and around the world is one of the fastest growing industry with a total revenue of about US$ 3 trillion. Indian pharma industry's revenue in 2013 was US$ 12 billion and is primarily driven by exports in the regulatory and emerging markets. India has 20,000 pharma companies and 60,000 distributors and large number of big and small retailers. Marketing is one of the most critical component of pharma industry. Continuously chaning business environment due to strict regulations, policies and guidelines have driven companies to adopt innovative ways to expand their customer base and stay ahead of the competition. Pawan Chaudhary, CMD of Venus Remedies, provides his perspective on the evolving aspects of the pharma industry, marketing strategies to survive in the dynamic and competitive environment and the future challenges that the industry faces. According to him, Patent Act of 2005 has shifted the approach of most pharma companies from merely generics to branded generics and towards R&D orientation. They generally spend 8-10% of their total sales on marketing related activities to properly position and promote their products. Due to highly specialized nature of his company's products, he explains the following tools that are used for effective marketing - Key Opinion Leaders (KOL); Webinars; Expositions; Conferences/Seminars; Social Media; Continuing Medical Education (CME) Programs. According to him the challenges faced by the pharma industry are - Rising costs of research and development with 8-10 years of time and US$ 800-1000 million investment to successfully develop a new chemical entity; Increasing regulations and drug policies like National Pharmaceutical Pricing Policy (NPPA) to reduce prices of essential medicines. He suggests that companies now need more agile, smarter and smaller marketing teams and field staff. They have to focus on new drug development and competitive pricing strategies to provide best value to customers. Read on...

The Financial Express: Art and science of pharma marketing
Author: Pawan Chaudhary

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 22 jan 2015

According to report 'Aarogya Bharat 2025' by NATHEALTH and Bain & Company, for sustainable growth India requires investments of US$ 3 trillion for the next 10 years. India's healthcare system is both under-served and under-consumed, threatening the continued economic progress. Shivinder Mohan Singh, President of NATHEALTH, says, 'At 1.3% of the GDP, public spending on healthcare in India is among the lowest across the developing countries and affects the poor and inaccessible rural areas the most.' Bain & Company's Karan Singh points out the need for healthcare spending to go to 6% of the GDP and suggests a required paradigm shift from curative to prevention and wellness. According to NATHEALTH's Founder Chairman, Prathap C. Reddy, to built a healthier India government cannot be the sole provider of health services but private sector has to play an important role to bridge the demand-supply gap. Read on...

Business Standard: Healthcare sector needs USD 3 trillion in 10 years
Author: NA

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 27 nov 2014

India has a rural population of about 80%, and according to a Deloitte report 60% of the hospitals are situated in the urban areas. Another study by Indian Institute of Public Opinion found that 89% of rural patients in India have to travel about 8 kms to access the basic healthcare and the rest have to travel even more. This data shows a huge rural-urban healthcare divide in India. To bridge this gap with the help of advancements in mobile technologies a collaborative effort between Balabhai Nanavati Hospital (BNH) and UST Global resulted in a telemedicine app that connects rural communities to medical specialists in tertiary hospitals. It eliminates the cost of travel and provides affordable care to rural population. According to Bipin Thomas, President of UST Global Health Group, 'As the app connects tertiary hospitals to primary and secondary care hospitals in remote locations where patients can get primary care consultation, only those requiring advanced treatments or surgeries will need to travel to specialty hospital in city centres. Mobile collaboration technology also helps multiple specialists to attend to a case.' He further adds, 'We are also looking to add more advanced features including integration with Google Glass, wearable medical devices, telecardiology and teleradiology in our future releases.' Read on...

InformationWeek: Indian hospital shows how mobility can improve healthcare
Author: Jasmine Kohli

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 04 sep 2014

Indiscriminate, inappropriate and excessive use of antibiotics leads to an undesirable consequence of multi drug resistant bug. In 2009 metallo lactamase NDM-1 was first detected in a patient in New Delhi. In a recent study conducted by a team of researchers led by Dr. Asad Ullah Khan and Dr. Shadab Parvez of Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), have found a deadly bacteria variant known as NDM-4 from the samples of the Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College Hospital's sewage. This is the first recorded occurence of NDM-4, which is also called 'super bug' and is a more deadly variant of NDM-1, in India. According to Dr. Khan, 'We have to spread more awareness nationwide regarding the urgent need of taking due precautions with regards to safe drinking water and uncontaminated food.' Dr. Khan mentioned that high risk group for this bacteria are people with very low resistance such as cancer and HIV patients. Read on...

The Financial Times: Antibiotic resistant 'super bug' found by Aligarh Muslim University researchers
Author: NA

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