Amol Naikawadi, Joint – Managing Director, Indus Health Plus speaks about how healthcare organisations will need to change their HR practices in these changing times
The healthcare job market is currently undergoing an immense transformation and would continue to do so in the near future. To curb the increasing burden of NCDs, and to change the direction of healthcare from curative to preventive, the government is bringing in new schemes in health and wellness, which in turn is increasing hiring in all verticals across healthcare and wellness. The demand for professionals will especially increase in the Tier 2 & 3 cities as well as non-corporate hospitals.
As the government is investing and sponsoring wellness and healthcare delivery across all verticals, from diagnostics to treatment, a lot of non-medico jobs will also increase. Earlier, only medicos and paramedics were considered to be a part of healthcare. The trend has already started moving on a new curve, where the different support functions are strongly catalysing the delivery of health facilities. Apart from speciality doctors, nurses, technicians, radiologists, there will be increased hiring in the marketing, IT, F&B and supply chainfunctions too.
Currently, healthcare infrastructure in the rural and sub-urban areas are underdeveloped, underutilised and also not at par with what we have in Tier 1 cities and metros. So, a majority of jobs will be created in those areas to cater to the health needs of the people.
Changing dynamics in job culture
In 2010, the healthcare market was focussed on treatment only. Therefore, the jobs were also into core healthcare areas. The resource allocation’s horizon is expanding with each day. Additionally, healthcare is no longer limited to doctor – patient relationship, the whole market is moving towards creating an enhanced customer experience. For example, at Indus, to fulfil our mission of making healthcare available, accessible and affordable for everyone, we have strengthened our technological platforms and incorporated new innovations. We aren’t limited to having doctors in our organisation – we have people from varied skill sets, such as IT, AI experts, scientists, data analysts, marketers, online and offline creative experts, service and delivery professionals. The whole idea behind this is to increase health awareness and education, customer experience and engagement.
Just to given an instance, we have people who studied the market in terms of how we can enhance the wellbeing of people through preventive healthcare. That helped us come up with DNAwise, a personal genetic test. Currently, we have bioinformaticians, genomicscientists, genetic counselors, molecular biologists on board for the product. In the future, we will also be looking at hiring from genetic epidemiology, genetic public health, Bio IT, data science to take our product to the next level.
Tranformations and job culture
With technological advancements and volumes of data being generated in the health field, 2020 would also be focused on data. Data can be used in various ways to implement wellness strategies for individuals. Considering this, talent would come from interface of biology, computer science, physics and mathematics. The job market would evolve with such an interface.
As discussed above, many jobs will open up even for professionals from non-biology domains. A big chunk of talent from premier institutes that goes abroad for further studies and better opportunities will also stay back. The organisations will also nurture the talents and use their potential to keep themselves abreast of the competition.
Are we prepare?
A significant amount of R&D and collaboration will be taking place all over the healthcare field. To meet the needs, professionals with some academic/industry experience would be preferred to take on the jobs as compared to fresh talent. As new opportunities develop, it will be difficult to match the exact requirements for the job profiles. Organisations will have to hire and upskill them according to the particular requirement.
Organisations will also have to work on salary structures to match the global competitive market. A lot of changes will come into picture in terms of training, infrastructure and facilities. Along the same note, typical healthcare delivery centres like hospitals will be creating the right kind of work environments and policies to attract the right and diverse talent pool.
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