Healthcare

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 22 may 2018

Artificial Intelligence's (AI) potential for healthcare transformation is becoming visible. AI health market is expected to increase exponentially from US$ 600 million in 2014 to US$ 6.6 billion by 2021. Rana Kapoor, MD & CEO of YES Bank and Chairman of YES Global Institute, explains how AI can redefine and revolutionize healthcare and transform existing healthcare sytems into 'smart wellness' delivery mechanisms. In the context of India, he says, 'With the Indian healthcare market estimated to grow to US$ 372 billion by 2022, coupled with growing healthcare needs of a 1.3 billion strong population, successfully leveraging AI, is vital to catapulting the 'healthcare of today' into the 'health-tech of tomorrow'.' He provides four ways AI can catalyze change in healthcare - (1) Economising healthcare costs through machine learning and big data. Integrating big data with wellness could potentially save the healthcare industry up to US$ 100 billion per year. (2) Merging cognitive computing and healthcare can potentially mitigate estimated global shortage of 12.9 million healthcare professionals by 2035. AI-powered applications can augment the services of physicians and expand healthcare outreach at affordable costs. (3) Enhanced diagnosis and identification of diseases. Through algorithms and analysis of big data patterns, AI can detect trends to enhance disease diagnosis and create treatment plans in order to efficiently streamline the healthcare needs of a patient. (4) AI and Internet of Things (IoT) can lead to personalization and more patient-centric approach to healthcare. Wearable gadgets powered by AI can capture and store health data of individuals and play an important role in preventive treatment. Mr. Rana further suggests, 'In India, where we rank a lowly 154th in the Healthcare Access and Quality Index, we must make collaborative efforts to unlock the potential of AI to create an enabling health technology ecosystem to match demand, optimise costs, and demonstrate value.' Read on...

The Indian Express: The health-tech of tomorrow
Author: Rana Kapoor

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 22 feb 2018

Challenges in healthcare provide opportunities to create new business models. Home healthcare is one such model that is currently getting more organized and seeking success in India's healthcare ecosystem. According to Cyber Media Research (CMR), the market stood at around US$ 3.20 billion in 2016, and is expected to grow to around US$ 4.46 billion by 2018 and US$ 6.21 billion in 2020. Vivek Srivastava, CEO and co-founder of Healthcare atHome, says, 'Home healthcare services are an extension of hospital services into the patient's house and providing personalized care by competent professionals. Home healthcare companies work with hospitals to widen their reach, by freeing the beds for new patients while covering almost 70% of all healthcare requirements of a consumer and extending to management of lifestyle and chronic diseases like diabetes, hypertension etc. over a consumer's lifetime. Its advantages include cost effectiveness with excellent clinical outcomes as customers end up saving 20-50% costs as compared to regular hospital treatment depending upon the services taken...it includes customized care plans prescribed by the patient's doctor; quicker patient recovery; and professional protocol-led healthcare.' Rajiv Mathur, Founder CCU (Critical Care Unified) Health Care, says, 'Interconnectivity through devices and portability of treatments and equipments makes it feasible to provide critical care at the comfortable environs of home. Patients receive individualized care designed to meet their specific needs. Home health care enables people to recuperate in the comfort and privacy of their own home, at a cost savings of 36-50% over hospitalization or nursing home confinement.' Rajit Mehta, CEO and MD of Max Healthcare, says, 'The demand for at-home healthcare delivery is growing. At the same time, quality post-operative care in familiar surroundings has been observed to enable faster patient recovery.' Prof. Arup Mitra of Health Policy Research Unit (HPRU) at Institute of Economic Growth, says, 'Home healthcare is becoming a brisk business nowadays. As elderly population in the country is increasing very fast and more and more people want to have better social positioning, facilities such as home healthcare seem very flashy at face value and is manifestation of people's social status. It is in a preliminary stage and may prove to be an illusion in future as there is no guarantee of risks and insurance involved.' Read on...

Livemint: Market for home healthcare services in India to double in a year - Report
Author: Neetu Chandra Sharma

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 29 nov 2017

According to the recent UNICEF report, 'Levels and Trends in Child Mortality 2017', India has witnessed 66% decline in the under-5 mortality rate from 1990 to 2015 but most of the newborn deaths (24% of all) still occur in the country. With this reduction India has met one of its Millennium Development Goal (MDG) targets. The report emphasised the need for equitable access to healthcare for girl child as under-5 mortality for girls in India remains 12.5% higher than the boys. Major barriers in seeking healthcare for the girl child include the high out-of-pocket expenses and cultural issues. The report stressed that investment in the education of the girl child is crucial and acknowledged that 'Beti Bachao Beti Padhao' scheme could be used for addressing the prevailing negative social norms towards the girl child in India. The report said that most of newborn deaths occurred in two regions: South Asia (39%) and sub-Saharan Africa (38%). Read on...

Little India: 66% decline in child mortality rate but most newborn still die in India: UN report
Author: NA

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 12 oct 2017

India's medical research is a cause of concern. According to the study, 'The research output from Indian medical institutions between 2005 and 2014' (Authors: Samrat Ray, Ishan Shah, Samiran Nundy; Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, India), published in 2016 in the Current Medicine Research & Practice journal, 'Only 25 (4.3%) of the institutions produced more than 100 papers a year but their contribution was 40.3% of the country's total research output. 332 (57.3%) of the medical colleges did not have a single publication during this period.' Authors used the SCOPUS database and analyzed the research output from 579 Indian medical institutions and hospitals. Peter Ashman, CEO of BMJ, explains, 'The academic vigour of any educational institution can be measured by its research output, the number of patents being filed, and how quickly research can translate into innovation. The next steps, that is commercialization and wide-scale adoption can follow and may take years, but first and foremost, there needs to be a robust research pipeline. For researchers in healthcare, it is important to have access to publishing tools, and programs that train them to develop core clinical research skills, and provide guidance in how to publish.' Clinicians need credible knowledge and research content, and continuously learn to stay competitive and relevant. India is undergoing rapid transformation in mobile and internet technologies. Digital tools can help customize the content for specific requirements. Mr. Ashman says, 'We believe that doctors need access to evidence based, updated and peer-reviewed content which deals with everyday issues in primary care and hospital medicine. The content delivery cycle should be mapped to the clinicians work schedule. E-learning platforms can help facilitate the access to education to doctors, right when they need it.' Read on...

The Times of India: Healthcare Challenges in India
Author: Peter Ashman

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 28 jul 2017

The survey report 'India Digital Health Report 2017' by D Yellow Elephant (DYE), a digital and social media firm, analyzes India's 160 leading healthcare companies on the basis of their online presence, engagement levels and relevancy on 12 major online platforms. The survey categorized companies into three sections based on their performance - Digial Primes; Digital Aspirants; Digital Onlookers. Among pharmaceuticals, Pfizer topped the Digital Prime category. In diagnostics segment, Apollo Diagnostic is the leader. While, in the hospital segment, Kokilaben Dhirubai Ambani Hospital and Medical Research Centre topped the category. The report placed 14% of the companies in the Digital Prime category, 54% in Digital Aspirants and 32% in Digital Onlookers. The report also finds that internet penetration in India is currently 35% with 23% Y-on-Y growth in its users. By 2020, India is expected to be home to 730 million internet users with as many as 175 million online shoppers. DYE projects healthcare sector in India growing at a fast pace and is currently values at US$ 100 billion. The sector is expected to touch US$ 280 billion by 2020 at a CAGR growth of 23%. Moreover, private equity and venture capital funding in the sector has gone up by 13 times from US$ 94 million in 2011 to US$ 1275 million in 2016, with an increase of 2.27% against 1.97% in overall health budget. Read on...

Elets eHealth Magazine: Survey reveals the digital health of Indian healthcare sector
Author: NA

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 16 jun 2017

Healthcare analytics can help in building better patient-doctor relationships for better health outcomes, achieving better operational efficiencies, personalization at a larger scale, targeted customer acquisition and more. Madhu Aravind, CEO of Searchlight Health, explores India's healthcare analytics scenario and what impact it can have in addressing the challenges faced by India's healthcare ecosystem. India's healthcare have some fundamental issues - Cost of healthcare is increasing at 20%; Shortage of 1.5 million doctors and 2 million hospital beds; Only about 5% of the middles class have health insurance. According to Mr. Aravind, 'If healthcare analytics needs to have an impact in India, then it has to tackle some of these fundamental issues...If one can aggregate information from multiple sources and build models that leverage these technologies (Natural Language Processing; Imgage recognition; Speech analysis; Large-scale computing power), then real value creation is possible.' FOR HOSPITALS: Customer acquitisition; Operational efficieny; Clinical delivery. 'The advent of digitization, abundant computing power and new age machine learning models, will enable the formulation of principles from observations from millions of people, creating the foundation for personalized medicine.' FOR INSURERS: Increase middle class coverage; Create customized products; 'Understand disease propensity in detail and also fully model the cost of care needed to manage various conditions.' FOR PHARMACEUTICAL SECTOR: Real world evidence to power R&D, clinical trials etc. India's healthcare analytics faces challenges - Lack of skilled talent; HealthTech spending is less than 1% of the health organization's budget. Read on...

The Economic Times: Healthcare analytics in India - Opportunities and challenges
Author: Madhu Aravind

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 20 feb 2017

According to India Brand Equity Foundation (IBEF), the Indian healthcare industry is currently pegged at around US$ 158 billion and is expected to hit US$ 280 billion by 2020. Alpna Doshi, CIO at Philips, while recently speaking on 'Digitalization of Healthcare' at NASSCOM India Leadership Forum, says, 'Unequal access, poor quality and rising costs are three key challenges faced by the healthcare industry.' She adds that these challenges are bringing new opportunities, particularly in the area where technology and healthcare converge. Predictive analytics, home-based healthcare, remote health monitoring with mobile devices and applications, are some prominent areas. Som Mittal, former President and Chairman of NASSCOM, says, 'While access to all will be there as connectivity improves, how can we make healthcare affordable?' And for this, he comments that technology needs to be responsible, citing high margins that are charged for medical devices. Ms. Doshi adds that healthcare companies cannot survive on lower margins, unless the volumes justify those margins. Tie ups with NGOs she said, was one way to increase volumes and thereby bring down costs. Automation in healthcare industry will become more prevalent. She points out that augmented reality and artificial intelligence will further disrupt the healthcare industry. Read on...

Forbes: The three key challenges faced by India's healthcare industry
Author: Varsha Meghani

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 23 oct 2016

Indian researchers, Naveen Kumar Malik of the Department of Electronics and Communication at Maharshi Dayanand University and V. R. Singh of the National Physical Laboratory, recently provided details about their 'Human Inspired Cognitive Wheelchair Navigation System' in the International Journal of Human Factors Modelling and Simulation. According to the researchers, 'The novel wheelchair navigation system can make the movable chairs avoid obstacles on their own and also sense when the user is tired or stressed. The smart wheelchair could also monitor user's heart rate, temperature or other vital signs for diagnostic purposes. The commercial version of the prototyped autonomous wheelchair would reduce the burden on care-giving staff in healthcare industry and improve the quality of life for disabled persons.' Read on...

India.com: Indian researchers design smart wheelchair
Author: NA

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 28 sep 2016

According to the conditions set forth in the CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) Law in India, all companies with a net worth of Rs 500 crore or revenue of Rs 1000 cr or net profit of Rs 5 cr should spend 2% of last 3 years average profit on charity work. CSR management firm, NextGen, studied the annual reports of the top 100 firms by market capitalizations on NSE (National Stock Exchange) for 2014-15 & 91 firms for 2015-16. The total spend on CSR activities for 91 firms is Rs 6033 cr for FY16, while it was Rs 4760 cr by 100 companies in FY15. According to Abhishek Humbad, co-founder of NextGen, 'More and more companies are realizing that not meeting 2% makes them look bad, and for large companies, it can turn out be a reputational risk.' The energy sector accounted for nearly 26% of the total CSR spending. Reliance was the largest spender in FY16, using 2.3% of its profit (Rs 652 cr) on education, health and other social activities. Jagannatha Kumar at chairman's office of RIL says, 'The amount spent on each of the focus areas varies on an annual basis depending on the scope of work for the year.' In FY16 RIL spend on healthcare halved to Rs 314 cr while on education it increased to Rs 215 cr from Rs 18 cr in FY15. According to Parul Soni of Thinkthrough Consulting, a CSR consultancy, 'Manufacturing companies like automotive have been well poised to do CSR because they focus on communities around their plants and it helps build engagement with local communities. Also, many of them are working in skill development.' Some of the top causes that corporates spend on are healthcare, poverty eradication, education, skill development, rural development, and environment. Noshir Dadrawala, CEO of Centre for Advancement of Philanthropy, says, 'Skills have been trendy. These causes have seen an increase because many of the skilling initiatives instead of being classified as an education initiative is being put under providing employment and reducing poverty. Also when it comes to healthcare, conducting blood donation camps is a popular way of doing CSR as it is easy and effective.' Ravi Chellam, ED of Greenpeace, points out that environment is not a priority issue for most Indian corporates. He says, 'On environmental issues, companies seem to prefer to focus on either their own campuses or areas immediately surrounding their locations.' According to Loveleen Kacker, CEO of Tech Mahindra Foundation, '50% of all our CSR capital goes into empowering women and another 10% for the disabled. We believe that any development can happen in any of the areas - from nutrition to sanitation, only when women are empowered. And we feel only economic empowerment of women can bring about social empowerment.' The top geographical regions that were beneficiary of CSR funds for FY16 are Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan and Karnataka. Vinod Kulkarni, head of CSR at Tata Motors Ltd, says, 'It is part of our policy to invest CSR funds in geographies in close proximity to our area of operation. It amplifies the outcomes and impact.' Arun Nagpal, co-founder of Mrida Group, comments, 'The reasons for firms to select geographies close to manufacturing plants or areas of work are valid but this leads to an imbalance in the division of CSR funding.' Read on...

Livemint: Firms ramp up CSR focus on healthcare, poverty, hunger
Authors: Arundhati Ramanathan, Moyna Manku

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 23 aug 2016

According to the latest OPPI-KPMG's 'Report on Healthcare Access Initiatives', India spends less on healthcare than most other middle income countries. It's total healthcare expenditure of about 4.1% of GDP is among the lowest in the world. The report highlights the following main gaps in India's healthcare - POOR HEALTHCARE INDICES: Life expectancy (68 years in 2015) one of the lowest among Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC); Infant Mortality Rate (IMR) of 38/1,000 live births and Maternal Mortality Rate (MMR) of 174/100,000 live births in 2015, highest among peer group. GROWING NON-COMMUNICABLE DISEASES (NCD) BURDEN: NCDs account for nearly 60% of deaths annually; Indian economy set to lose US$ 4.58 trillion by 2030 due to NCDs. INADEQUATE HEALTHCARE INFRASTRUCTURE: Number of hospital beds of 0.9 per 1,000 population is lowest among BRIC; 75% of dispensaries and 60% of hospitals are in the urban areas. NEED FOR MORE TRAINED HUMAN RESOURCES: Lowest number of physicians per 10,000 population among BRIC; 80% of doctors are in the urban areas serving only 28% of the population. POOR AVAILABILITY: In rural India, only 37% of people have access to In-Patient Department (IPD) facilities within a 5km distance, and only 68% have access to an Out-Patient Department (OPD). BURDENED CARE: Nearly 63 million people are in debt due to health expenditure; Nearly 1/3 of population is driven below the poverty line due to health expenses. INADEQUATE GOVERNMENT SUPPORT: The government funds only 1/3 of health expenditure; Gross Domestic Product (GDP) spend on healthcare (4.1%) lowest among BRIC. POOR INSURANCE COVERAGE: Nearly 75% of population uncovered. Out-of-pocket (OOP) contributes close to 86% of private and 60% of overall healthcare expenditure. Report suggests a patient-centric approach to tackle India's healthcare challenges and points out that awareness and education can strengthen the four pillars (4As) of healthcare - Availability; Affordability; Accessibility; Acceptability. Utkarsh Palnitkar, Partner at KPMG, says, '...Only a long-term, proactive strategy with education and awareness at its centre, involving all stakeholders, i.e., healthcare providers, insurance companies and healthcare and pharmaceutical companies, can achieve the desired vision of a healthy country.' Shailesh Ayyangar, President of Organisation of Pharmaceutical Producers of India (OPPI), says, 'Universal Healthcare is a social priority...India's healthcare strategy requires a holistic approach and a critical evaluation of our existing systems. We need sustainable policy solutions to address healthcare financing, infrastructure and human resource challenges.' Read on...

The Economic Times: India's total healthcare expenditure at about 4.1% of GDP, among the lowest in the world - OPPI-KPMG report
Author: NA

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