Indian Healthcare’s 7 Exciting Challenges

In my past posts, I have focused on the diagnostics industry’s growth trends and NGIVD’s own journey. Here, I wanted to share thoughts on a more fundamental question: Why is the clinical diagnostics capability critical in our nation’s healthcare strategy?

To set the context, healthcare needs have surged in India because of three explosions: population, middle class and information. More people expect access to quality healthcare as a hygiene factor in their lives and are getting aware of acceptable standards through the democratisation of information through digital means, especially social media. The visible symptom of this is crowded tertiary care or multi-speciality hospitals, both in the public and private health domains.

To my mind, the clinical diagnostics industry is helping solve 7 key healthcare challenges in India. Many of these are still works in progress, but the pace is exciting and much needed.

• Access: Today, in most parts of India, a person does not have to go far to get themselves tested. In most urban and semi-urban set-ups, the technician collects the sample from home. In rural settings, especially in public health programmes, field healthcare personnel are armed with point-of-care testing for prevalent disease. This enables quick identification and ‘go-no-go’ decisions to the next level of diagnosis and treatment.

• Anticipation: Screening is the most important breakwater against overcrowding of secondary and tertiary healthcare facilities. My friends in the medical community share estimates that 30-40% of patient visits in speciality hospitals could have been pre-empted with better screening or routing to a more basic treatment centre. Imagine those numbers of patients reduced from waiting areas in our prestigious hospitals. Add to that the family members who accompany a patient—many from rural areas sacrificing their wages to provide support.

• Affordability: As the industry acquires scale and competition, the prices keep going down, both at the kits production as well as the lab testing end. Democratising this access is crucial to have an inclusive healthcare platform for a large developing nation like ours.

• Accuracy: As tests become more accurate because of technology and quality, there will be less false-positives and false-negatives. The second one carries more health and life risk, but both can lead to costly and time-wasting corrections in the health care systems. Today, around 30% of test kits results are considered erroneous on account of quality. This rectification itself could create amazing efficiencies and confidence in the health care system.

• Empowerment: A clinical diagnostics test result equips the healthcare provider to take a quick and accurate treatment decision. It also empowers the patient with access to the same report in an increasingly understandable format, enabling her to have a more equally and informed discussion with her physician, with less fear of wrong or excessive treatment.

• Employment: This industry is creating a large cadre of healthcare technicians at the collection, screening, analysis, equipment sales, service and support level. The great thing is that the screening model necessitates creating of this capability in even the remotest regions of the country. So, we, in the diagnostics business, play our part in making the demographics of our nation into a dividend.

• Prevention: There is now an increasing trend towards preventive healthcare. The movement to healthier lifestyles to avoid urban lifestyle diseases like diabetes and obesity is leading people to regular screening, supplemented with wearable digital devices with health apps. Data integration from various sources, including genetic screening, coupled with AI predictive screening, will provide an even clearer road map of customised healthcare strategies. The reducing costs and the advantage over traditional healthcare protocols, along with mobile tech, will give this capability to practically our entire population. (Sceptics can take note of the proliferation of mobiles, Wi-Fi and UPI in India.)

As I said, lots to be done, but to express it with the title of a famous poem by the great Indian philosopher Rabindranath Tagore, clinical diagnostics will help in creating a healthcare ecosystem Where the mind is without fear.