The three-day conference was themed on, “Transforming Healthcare beyond COVID” and was organised from 20th-22nd Oct 2021
On the conclusive 3rd day of FICCI annual healthcare conference various panel discussions were held on how to bring healthcare at everybody’s doorstep and the future of med-tech industry in India. The 15th edition of FICCI HEAL was scheduled from 20th-22nd Oct 2021 on the theme, “Transforming Healthcare beyond COVID” on a virtual platform and included keynote addresses, thought leadership and plenary sessions, panel discussions as well as talks covering the entire spectrum of healthcare delivery- public health, capacity building, insurance, digital health, diagnostics, medical technologies, home healthcare as well as vaccines. The conference was supported by Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and NITI Aayog, Government of India.
The recent COVID-19 pandemic has brought healthcare to the centre-stage. The community at large has recognised the potential and need for healthcare and how prioritization of it can impact people, countries, and the economy. The speakers focussed on the recognition received for home healthcare and the transformation to the digital care models during the pandemic. In an earlier session during the Digital Health Session, speakers like Dr R S Sharma, CEO, National Health Authority, Government of India; Dr Jan Herzhoff, President, Health Markets, Elsevier; Sigal Atzmon, Founder & CEO, Medix Global and others had shared their insights on the transformation through digitization.
While talking about the changing landscapes of Diagnostics, Dr Om Manchanda, MD, Dr Lal PathLabs shared that Indian market is larger as compared to many other countries and there is a huge potential for organized players and a shift from unorganized to organised is required. There are many enablers for this shift- initially it was quality but today service is playing a big role too”.
Adding to this, Travis Monke, General Manager-APAC, Abbott Molecular Diagnostics said, “Within the continuum of care, diagnostics plays a key role in deciding the course of treatment and delivering patient care, and its importance has been further strengthened during the pandemic. The introduction of fast, reliable, molecular and rapid antigen tests illustrates the benefit of decentralized technologies at the point of care.”
Speaking on the event, Dr Shravan Subramanyam, FICCI Medical Devices Committee and President & CEO, GE Healthcare South Asia said, “The med-tech industry today could not be in a better place to address the needs of the market, patients and communities. The mandate from our government to be self-reliant is very critical, and med-tech sector which faced many challenges during the pandemic, has benefited quite a lot through production linked incentives and various other schemes”.
Madan Krishnan, Vice President and Managing Director, India Medtronic shared his view on infrastructure, “Today if we look at the viability gap funding in health sector, its negligible. One of the state government to increase the viability gap is creating health institutions by giving it to private players in the PPE model by announcing tenders. Today we need a single window clearance system so that there is an ease of expansion of health infrastructure”.
Dr K Madan Gopal, Senior Consultant, NITI Aayog, GoI, who joined for the Session on Capacity Building also expressed his concerns on healthcare infrastructure, “while we have to infuse lots of funds into infrastructure, we also have to infuse more efforts and activities for capacity creation- both from public as well as the private sector.
Kaivaan Movdawalla, Partner- Healthcare, EY moderating shared that, “India needs to add 9 lac more beds over the next decade to serve the UHC agenda over the next decade. It is imperative to ensure equitable generation and distribution of this capacity in under-served districts through targeted incentives and viability gap funding.”
The conference ended with a very unique and interesting discussion between Dr Narottam Puri, Advisor- FICCI Health Services & MVT Committees; Board Member & Former Chairman- NABH; Hony. Professor & Advisor-IMA; Advisor-Medical Operations, Fortis Healthcare Ltd. and Vaibhav Vohra, Managing Director, Continental Carriers. They highlighted how businesses sustained the pandemic through Transformational Leadership with incredible insights on the business of logistics and supply chain that helped to position India at the global platform.
The conference was closed by Dr Alok Roy, Chair, FICCI Health Services Committee & Chairman, Medica Group of Hospitals, who said that, “the three-day Conference was organized with a view to converge all healthcare stakeholders and provide a forum for sharing of learnings and experiences as well as deliberate on the opportunities for transforming Indian healthcare system beyond COVID”.
The conference was a conglomeration of CEOs, policy makers, national and international leaders from healthcare and allied industries. A FICCI-KPMG Knowledge Paper on ‘COVID Induced Healthcare Transformation’, was released during the Inaugural session.