New Delhi: The APAC HealthTech innovation Conclave concluded on a high note here on Wednesday. The focus on the last day of the three-day conclave was on role of digital payments in healthcare sector, Care with empathy & compassion in patient care, role of Public Private Partnership (PPP) for creating effective healthcare ecosystem and how universities can lead the transformation to digital health.
Cash to cashless transactions is still a far cry in the healthcare sector in spite of massive inroads felt panelists. Trust in online payments is still a matter of concern especially among the older patients. “Network connectivity is required at the remotest place. There are limitations with language in payment platforms. Need to work on vernacular languages too apart from English. Voice assistance has started coming in EMR,” said Ankit Shah, CFO, Omni Hospitals.
Medical tourism is coming of age
India is turning into a major medical tourism destination due to its low cost treatment and services. Hyderabad, Chennai, Mumbai, Delhi and other cities are growing in medical tourism. Speaking on the ease of payments, S Sivakumar, CFO, Woodlands Hospital said that the Mywoodlands App is popular among Indians living in the Middle east and they find value to get treatment in India.” He added, ““In the last year the percentage of growth in cashless has scaled up due to paytm adoption and other services. We launched homecare treatment to patients with easy mechanism of digital transactions. ”Medical tourism has a lot of advantages and there are export service benefits, averred Ankit Shah, CFO, Omni Hospitals.
Empathy, a neglected area
In the entire hullabaloo about technology, the main reason of healthcare which is to provide treatment with compassion has taken a backseat said panelists. Moderating the session, Dr Aloke Mullick, Group CEO, OMNI Hospitals interspersed the discussion with videos and deliberations. “When an empathetic doctor treats the immunity levels go up. There is a psychosomatic layer in cancer and medico-legal consent happens faster with an empathetic surgeon. Provide healing touch which is patient centric and not disease centric.” Said Dr OP Yadava, CEO, National Heart Institute.
Concurring with the view, Dr Chandrika Kambam, Director- Clinical Services, HCG Group of Hospitals said, “It is about how you make patients feel. Empathy differentiates between a good doctor and a great doctor.” Dr. Vijay Aggarwal, Head – Medical Services, Motherhood Hospitals said, “In medical college it is keep your emotions away. Patient needs reassurance and compassion. A bad clinical outcome needs emotional support.”
To tackle the problem, Sonymol K, Chief Nursing Officer, Aster Medcity, Cochin said that an assessment tool for empathy needs to be in place.
In the session on ‘Role of Public Private Partnership (PPP) for creating effective healthcare ecosystem’ panelists felt incentives in PPP models, focus on prevention to cure, promotion of small startups, relooking at the funding mechanism and network connectivity are the issues that need immediate attention.
In the concluding session on how universities can lead the transformation to digital health the panelists apart from explaining the initiatives at their medical institutes expressed the need for a robust adoption of technology so that future medical practitioners are digital ready. Dr Ashok Kumar Mahapatra, Vice Chancellor, Siksha ‘O’ Anusandhan University said, “India requires 18 lakh doctors. There is tremendous mismatch. Telemedicine is the backbone of medicine. We had 2200 Covid patients in Bhubaneswar and gave radiology through telemedicine.”
“We looked at our curriculum and how we could incorporate digital health as we are grooming healthcare providers,” said Dr Preethi, Chitkara University. “While there is no denying the fact that digital health is the order of the day, adoption across a large country like India may not be uniform but such conferences do play a role in inching closer to that goal. We assure that we would be coming up with many more such conferences in the days to come, said Gopi Arora, Group Editor and Co-founder APAC News Network.
