Technology has emerged as a game changer for healthcare even as it provides unique solutions to mitigate India’s several challenges especially seen during the pandemic. The world’s largest vaccination and efficient management of the pandemic owed much to technology. It is expected to play a critical role in achieving the Government goal of Universal Health Coverage by 2030 as well.
The budgetary allocations for health in 2022-23 were nearly 2 per cent. The industry is hoping that the government would surely make provisions for spending an extra 0.5 per cent of GDP every year on health for the next five years and encourage private sector investments through tax sops and other incentives.
Says Ashim Kumar, Facility Director, Narayana Super Speciality Hospital, Howrah, “We have already witnessed the importance of technology in healthcare. Now, we need to move to the next level by adapting technologies (digital health with all its newer tools like IoT, AI, data analytics, and electronic records). New technologies can take care of the entire continuum of care. These technologies have specific roles from admission to discharge and post-discharge period too.”
“The union budget for 2023-24 should be strategically planned with a focus on providing affordable medical care solutions to citizens of India so that everyone has access to quality medical services. In addition, the government should look into providing tax benefits to those who are investing in life sciences in order to boost research and development in this sector. Furthermore, it is essential that there be more investments in public health infrastructure so as to reduce the overall cost of medical care while simultaneously improving its quality,” adds Dr. Gayatri Kamineni, COO, Kamineni Hospitals.
“Budget 2023 can provide a huge fillip to create the kind of healthcare ecosystem that will propel India to achieve global leadership. One major factor to drive the next phase of growth will be Public-private partnerships, especially in providing community-focused solutions for improved services. Further incentivizing health-seeking behaviour by tweaking the tax slabs, reconsidering GST terms, promoting health infrastructure & exponential investments in research and development will immensely help in addressing concerns of both affordability and accessibility,” adds Dr Sangita Reddy, Joint Managing Director, Apollo Hospitals Group.
Anurag Kashyap, Director-Finance & Strategy, TR Life Sciences, said, “Both capital and operational expenditure have significantly increased for the hospitals. This has cascading effects on the cost of treatment. For sustainability and quality, the hospitals would pass on the burden to the patients. To overcome this challenge, we are expecting that the government would create an enabling mechanism for credit facilities. Long-term (15-20 years) credit facilities would come as a booster dose for the sector as it would decrease the burden. Interest rate, tenure, and collateral are the major concerns. Easy access to capital at lower rates without collaterals would long way to creating a new healthcare ecosystem in the country.”
The existing and potential threats like COVID-19 imply that India has to holistically improve the healthcare infrastructure. Revamping the conventional approach to healthcare is the need of the hour. It is undeniable that institutional healthcare facilities and networks of hospitals, PHCs and CHCs etc., have to be at the core of medical services. However, instead of being the sole option for healthcare, institutional facilities need to operate in collaboration with technology-driven medical services. “The large medical facilities should ideally serve as hubs of intensive and critical care. For disease management, long-term care, rehabilitation and preventive care, a support system of point-of-care service delivery has to be built. This can be seamlessly achieved through an integrated approach that brings innovators, hospitals, diagnostic centres, and out-of-hospital healthcare services together,” says Meena Ganesh, Co-Founder and Chairperson, Portea Medical.
The healthcare sector needs an extremely robust and highly incentivized policy for domestic manufacturing of medical technology and consumables. “Currently, India is importing Rs. 63,200 crore of medical devices and is over 80 percent dependent on imports. India needs self-reliance in this area which is largely dependent on imports. There needs to be continued support in terms of tax reforms for Research and Development in the medical technologies sector,” opines Vishal Bali, Executive Chairman, Asia Healthcare Holdings (AHH).
The medical devices sector is looking forward to promote an innovation ecosystem. Says Jatin Mahajan, Managing Director, J Mitra & Company, “Medical devices is an innovation-driven industry where new products may take 5-10 years to reach a market-ready stage. “Make in India” has been a significant trigger to promote manufacturing activities in India. “Innovate in India” is a natural precursor to “Make in India” for the medical device industry and hence needs equivalent focus and support to realise the dream of making India a Global Medical Device Hub.”
The healthcare sector requires different solutions including higher public and private spending to deal with its challenges. In order to support patients in gaining access to high-quality and cost-effective care, new models should enable the development of a comprehensive and integrated healthcare ecosystem in the country.
The pharmaceutical sector has highlighted the need for a comprehensive research and development policy. R&D in healthcare requires substantial investments over a long period of time. Recently, the US pharma industry has also urged that India should come out with a R&D policy for its pharmaceutical sector.
“It is time that the government of India comes out with a research and development policy for the pharmaceutical sector,” says Karun Rishi, president of USA-India Chamber of Commerce (USAIC). Observing that in the midst of a global downturn, India is a bright spot, Rishi said the budget should focus on growth strategies, increasing public expenditure on healthcare, capacity building, skills development and employment creation.
According to Sugandh Ahluwalia, Chief Strategy Officer, Indian Spinal Injuries Centre, “India has emerged as a key destination for medical tourism. Highly experienced doctors combined with world-class facilities, attract millions of overseas patients. It is a huge foreign exchange earner segment. We expect that Union Budget 2023-24 would provide further momentum with fresh incentives to this segment which witnessed a slowdown during the COVID-19 crisis but now recovered.”
In nutshell, the ease of access to capital to encourage entrepreneurship in healthcare, incentives to create newer and sustainable models to improve accessibility, availability and quality in tier 3 &4 cities including rural areas and health insurance coverage for ‘Missing Middle’ would go long way to transform the healthcare systems in India. Expediting investments in capacity building, especially in tier 3 & 4 cities and rural areas, would help in the realization of the dream of Universal Healthcare on the set deadline.
