India is one of the fastest growing healthcare markets in the world and the Indian healthcare industry has seen tremendous growth in the last decade. The industry has been growing exponentially due to ever increasing per capita healthcare spending and investments in this sector by private players. Additionally, a rapidly expanding economy, increasing urbanisation, awareness among people and the increased prevalence of lifestyle diseases have resulted in a corresponding increase in demand for more and better hospital services. Although, lifestyle diseases are expected to grow at a faster rate than infectious diseases in India, over the next 5-10 years, infectious and chronic degenerative disorders also continue to grow unabated.
With a significant talent pool of competent doctors and paramedics and one of the lowest price points in the world, the stage is set for us to increase the accessibility of quality healthcare and clinical excellence to all within India including the hinterland and reach out to patients beyond Indian borders. It is heartening to note that the healthcare providers are cognizant of the need to provide high quality of healthcare delivery and empathetic patient care, beyond clinical excellence.
India is emerging as a strong brand and is seen as a viable healthcare destination today. The emerging trend of medical value travel suggests the possibility of India?s healthcare services opening up to the whole world. India?s cost advantage and the growth of private hospitals, equipped with the latest technology and skilled healthcare professionals, has made it a preferred destination for medical value travel. The Indian government has also formulated favourable policies to promote health tourism. India provides best-in-class treatment, in some cases at less than one tenth the cost incurred in the United States. India?s private hospitals
especially excel in specialities such as cardiology, joint-replacement, orthopaedic surgery, gastroenterology, ophthalmology, organ transplants and urology.
Most corporate hospitals in India are creating large networks and technology play an important role in connectivity. In the future, the deployment of 3G technology will help take the Indian healthcare industry to the next level. This technology will enable video broadcast, data-intensive services and telemedicine through wireless communications?all of which will help doctors to monitor faraway patients. Technology will also help the creation and maintenance of electronic healthcare records and increase the efficiency of hospital information systems. Telemedicine, the remote diagnosis, monitoring and treatment of patients via video-conferencing or the internet is likely to be the next big trend in patient treatment across India. Today, there are about 120 telemedicine centres through the country and the Indian government has made a large commitment to the growth of telemedicine.
With all this said, all of this progress can come to a screeching halt if we become complacent and do not anticipate trends and think of solutions. India is still lacking on some of the crucial parameters of healthcare. There is still a shortage of trained medical professionals and nurses in the country (particularly in rural India) and this continues to be a major challenge in healthcare delivery. The medical education policy needs to change and healthcare education should be opened up to encourage an increase in the quantity and quality of medical personnel. This will help generate more talent and meet the huge shortage of doctors, nurses and trained paramedical staff.
Also as we bring in technology to aid medical professionals and make treatment faster and more comfortable for the patient, we need to look at the cost of technology. Much of the technology today comes at a prohibitive cost and
restricts accessibility for a large section of our population. We must look at creating indigenous world-class equipment and innovative ways to bring down the cost of technology.
Another way is to develop robust IT platforms for remote access to technology for a larger
population and reduce the cost by using economies of scale.
Presently, the Indian healthcare contributes approximately 5% to the GDP and growth has been driven largely by the private sector. Though the government has adopted many growth oriented policies over the years, the gap between demand and supply in healthcare services persists. A large part of healthcare remains concentrated in India?s big cities, leaving the rural population wanting. This disparity could be bridged by granting ?priority status? to the healthcare sector and greater incentive to expand into the country?s second tier towns. A vast majority of Indians are still unable to access quality healthcare. This disparity can be bridged, when the government and private sector work together to bring reliability, affordability and accessibility. The Indian government should focus on quality healthcare delivery through effective public and private participation in healthcare. The insurance sector has a huge role to play as we still have one of the lower rates of insurance penetration across country. The need of the hour is to package the insurance schemes to make it viable for a wider base of the population.
The healthcare industry has gained momentum over last few years and is likely to continue to grow at a significant pace in years to come. We must continue to focus on making the high quality healthcare affordable and accessible to all within India and beyond our frontiers.