Emerging trends in Indian healthcare

Emerging Technologies in Healthcare

Where do you think the Indian healthcare system is heading—and what needs to be done?

India has the second-highest number of hospitals worldwide (excluding private hospitals and clinics as well as nursing homes). However, the country ranks low in terms of life expectancy. The Economic Times1 also noted that India has the highest deaths of children under the age of five and 21 per cent of the world's burden of disease, worsened by poor basic health and sanitation. Yet, government spending on healthcare in India was estimated at 5 per cent of its GDP2 in 2013 and is expected  to remain at the level through to 2016, a disproportionate amount compared to its population.

Against this backdrop, the private sector has emerged as a vibrant force in India’s healthcare landscape. The healthcare industry is growing rapidly at a CAGR of 17 per cent3 and is expected to become a US$280 billion industry by 20204. In partnership with the private sector, the government has also committed to healthcare reforms aimed at uplifting the standards of healthcare delivery and to make healthcare available for all.

What needs to be done? A core focus on Translational Medicine both in terms of budget and technologies is critical. For example, the US has allotted almost half (US$60 billion) of its US$121 Billion National Institutes of Health (NIH) budget from 2012-2015to ‘translational’ groups – the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the Health and Human Services (HHS). I have spoken with several groups about the ‘Aadhar’ program in India and its healthcare vision. Our (Dell EMC) Centers of Excellence (CoE) in Bengaluru and Pune are contributing in a small way toward Aadhar. This is a great start, but we need to focus more on the macro-economic and macro-disease issues within India: Stress, Pollution, Diet, Water and Sanitation.

One opportunity is to link initiatives such as Digital India to help elevate the healthcaresystem. This points to a ‘mash-up’ between digitisation in healthcare, smart cities and an ecological approach toward water and sanitation. India is in a position to leap-frog past other emerging economies due to its stability as compared to the other BRIC countries.

What are the greatest challenges and opportunities facing the emerging healthcare system, and how will technology help in meeting them?

Across the world, the key challenges facing the healthcare industries include an ageing population; rising incidence of lifestyle-related non-communicable diseases such as diabetes and heart diseases; as well as a growing pool of digitally-empowered patients.

Technology can be the answer to these challenges. However, many healthcare organisations are not refreshing their IT investment fast enough and adopting new solutions with respect to data collection (Electronic Medical Records), data transfer (protocols), privacy and security.

I believe that most important innovations will come in the ‘protocol’ layer for healthcare. Healthcare organisations will need to be able to pool data from any structured or unstructured source into an organised data lake, and use this to keep refining the treatment options for patients.The use of data lakes, over a period of time, can also help institutions uncover trends that can help improve knowledge on patient care, drug options and treatment. For institutions, such insight can also mean new business models and new incentive models at large scale.

Another key area is security. In the US, it is well known that there is a more than 96 per cent probability that any hospital’s data will be breached. The healthcare industry is the least prepared to recover after a breach.In fact, in the recent Global Data Protection Index commissioned by Dell EMC, only 24 per cent of public healthcare providers in Asia are very confident of fully recovering systems and data to meet business service level agreements in the event of a data loss incident.