A prescription for the future-While using cutting-edge technology, we need to find ways to continuously lower the cost of healthcare
- The Internet has taken over our lives, smartphone penetration is growing rapidly, demographics are evolving.
- There are dramatic lifestyle and behavioural changes occurring every day, with strong implications for the future of our planet and its inhabitants.
Impactful changes
- Healthcare is no stranger to change — in fact, the most impactful transformations in human life have happened in healthcare.
- Healthcare in India too has been transformed over the last three decades, and as members of this industry, we can be proud of how far we’ve come in terms of improved indices on life expectancy, infant mortality, maternal deaths and quality of outcomes.
- But we cannot rest on these achievements now, because the pace of change is still scorching, and is fundamentally altering disease patterns, patient risk profiles and their expectations.
- Information technology and biotechnology are twin engines, with immense potential to transform the mechanics of care delivery, the outcomes we can achieve and, above all, the lives we can touch and save.
- Biotechnology, cell biology and genetics are opening up whole new paradigms of understanding of human life and disease, and have made personalised medicine a way of life.
Largest health scheme
- So, the outlook is clear: those in healthcare who wish for status quo and for the comfort of the familiar run the risk of becoming irrelevant.
- India’s change imperative has become even more pronounced with the launch of the Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana Abhiyan, or National Health Protection Mission (NHPM), under the ambit of Ayushman Bharat.
- In our quest to achieve low-cost healthcare, we must not inhibit our potential for growth, nor isolate ourselves from exciting global developments.
The way forward
- The prescription is clear. We need to achieve a balance between staying at the cutting edge of clinical protocols, technology and innovation and continue to deliver world-class care, while finding increasingly efficient ways of operating to continuously lower the cost of care and bring it within the reach of those who cannot afford it.
Comments (0)