Health technology enabling improved consumer opportunity and health outcomes connecting the last mile

The importance of medical devices and health technology has been realised in this manner towards prevention, treatment and management of disease. Most industries have experienced rapid technological innovations over the last decade, and the ongoing pandemic has helped accelerate the process of the adoption of technology in the healthcare domain. The government of India’s Aatma Nirbhar Bharat has called for India to be self-reliant and to this, it is imperative that the nation builds sustainable operations in the healthcare domain. CII is organising the Health Tech Conference 2021 on “ Building Sustainable Health Technology for Aatma Nirbhar Bharat” from 11-12th March 2021 to deliberate on cohesive strategies, cross sectoral policy dialogues and strategic exchanges that can transform the Health Technology sector and propel its growth.

Addressing the inaugural session Suresh Prabhu, Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha and, India’s Sherpa – G 7 & G 20 highlighted the importance of a strong public health delivery system. More public health spending acts as preventive care for health, where increased spending ensures that we address issues that may happen over the long run. India is in the midst of a fabulous opportunity, as the nation is recognised in the pharmaceutical domain, not only for formulations but also developing our own molecules. We should create a holistic Special Economic Zone, which is an integrated complex of all our capabilities in terms of medical devices, modern medicine, R&D, AYUSH and providing backend support where the government acts as a facilitator. It is also imperative that Health Tourism be at the forefront, as the Government of India has allotted 5000 crores to the program for the development of this sector. As there is a renewed focus on public health globally, India is well poised to take advantage.

S Aparna, Secretary, Department of Pharmaceuticals spoke on digitisation reaching the last frontier of human endeavor with developments in healthcare. The med-tech and health technology space has evolved through rapid innovation in the last coupler years, where we have seen frugal innovation in India which has helped the nation to counter the challenges thrown by the pandemic. Technology is impacting the healthcare sector in a number of ways; we have telemedicine and tele-diagnostics, the use of AI and robotics and data analytics is another area where India is developing and has immense potential to continue to develop. The third areas is remote monitoring of patients, and the fourth is personalised therapy, medicines and wearables. We need to create a strategy for the healthcare domain based on four aspects; Availability, Accessibility, Quality and Affordability.

The GoI is keen on developing a National Single Window System with Invest India where all details will be uploaded on a single platform, said Dr S Eswara Reddy Joint DCGI CDSCO.

India, besides being the pharmacy to the world can also be a provider of medical technology to the world stated Dr Naresh Trehan, Chairman CII Healthcare Council, and Chairman and Managing Director Medanta – The Medicity In order to achieve this, we need to start accumulating technology to Make in India. The next step would be to design in India.

Himanshu Baid, Chairman, CII National Medical Technology Forum and Managing Director, Polymedicure expressed that technology infusion along with infrastructure development will help increases accessibility, affordability and availability of healthcare services. Technology is providing the healthcare systems with innovative solutions that are desperately needed.

Speaking at the session on Healthcare Technology – NDHM and Optimising the Operating Models to promote Digital Health Dr Om Manchanda managing Director, Dr Lal Path labs said, “One of biggest changes that have been brought about by technology in the entire management of operations going virtual. Technology is becoming the mainstream of healthcare operations by making healthcare both accessible and affordable and the entire experience being made convenient for the consumer. Operating model of service players is also changing.”

Focusing on the importance of the National Digital Health Blueprint Abhishek Kumar Executive Director – IT In Healthcare National Health Authority (NHA) said, “Making the healthcare ecosystem interoperable is the main objective of the NDHM. We need to have common identifiers so that all the stakeholders of the healthcare ecosystem can be identified distinctly. We also need to develop standards and make the ecosystem players adopt them. One key element of NDHM is that it is voluntary for all stakeholders. It is citizen centric with the individual being in control of the data. We don’t seek to create a central repository of data, instead, data will be maintained at hospital and patient level.” He said that in NDHM various registries are in place and functional in 6 Union Territories which will be expanded to other cities soon. “NDHM and its adoption pace is going to increase with time. As we keep on expanding the project people will start seeing more value in it which will give a major boost to value added services,” he added.

Joy Chakraborty, Chief Operating Officer, PD Hinduja Hospitals said, “For the interest of the population of India NDHM should be made mandatory without which there may occur system failure. NDHM would play a critical role in linking the primary, secondar and tertiary level healthcare providers. Due to NDHM so much of data will be created  on one platform that will significantly influence patient treatment and management and doctors will be able to generate their own treatment guidelines.”

Dr Shubnum Singh, Advisor, CII Healthcare Council stated telemedicine has been in India for around 20 years, however, it’s moment of arrival has happened in adversity. It suddenly has exponentially grown up to 89 per cent. The hesitancy that was seen earlier, from both the doctor and patients side, has been overcome with acceptance.

Dr S Eswara Reddy, Joint DCGI, CDSCO, highlighted a number of government initiatives taken. He said, “The Government of India is keen on developing health technology. MoHFW and CDSCO have developed a digital health vision. The main objective of National Digital Health Mission is to create ad complete digital health ecosystem that supports Universal Health Coverage in efficient, accessible, timely and safe manner. Government has a well defined policy and vision and is in various stages of implementation of Health IT. On the regulation side, CDSCO with support of MoHFW have already notified Medical Device Rules 2017 where it is mandatory to submit applications only online.  We have defined medical devices and have included software as a medical device. We have also developed Unique Identifiers for medical devices and from January 1, 2022, it will be mandatory to track and trace medical devices. We are also in the process if completely revamping the Sugam Portal where we will use artificial intelligence for preliminary review of applications by the system itself. The GoI is keen on developing a National Single Window System with Invest India where all details will be uploaded on a single platform. Both portals of state governments and sugam portal will be integrated with the National Single Window System.”

Commenting on e-pharmacies Dr Reddy said, “There are many benefits of e-pharmacy like increase in access and convenience for the consumer. Availability of medicine will also increase and enhance services of the pharmacists. It will also ensure complete traceability of records. All the data generated will be key in making analytics. However, there are also some concerns such as multiple dispensation of drugs and uploading of fake prescriptions.”