It has been widely recognized that the pandemic is much more than a health crisis. By disrupting both supply and demand simultaneously across all industries globally, it has adversely impacted the entire world economy immeasurably. 

Healthcare, an essential to India's critical infrastructure

The pandemic has shown that healthcare systems are not sufficiently resilient despite many noteworthy advances. And it is not just in India. Globally, healthcare systems have been thrown into disarray by COVID-19 in an unprecedented manner. Across the world, countries are grappling with the challenges in overcoming the disease, protecting both patients and care providers while ensuring essential health services.

“Worldwide, countries are striving to strengthen primary healthcare as the backbone of resilient health systems and the most effective way to achieve health for all. High-quality primary healthcare promotes person-centered, comprehensive frontline services that meet the majority of people’s health needs. It thereby lays the foundation for preventing, detecting, and responding to infectious disease outbreaks, improving health outcomes for vulnerable people, and enabling universal healthcare, “ shares the Managing Director of Siemens Healthineers India, Gerd Hoefner.

The immediate focus

“There are three immediate priorities of healthcare- affordability, accessibility and accuracy and the need of the hour is to make high quality healthcare affordable and accessible to all,” believes Hoefner.

These priorities have catalysed shifts that are making medicine more precise, transforming care delivery, and improving patient experience. These shifts have resulted in better healthcare outcomes at lower costs. The most important enabler of these shifts is the digitalization of healthcare.

Driving digital 

The healthacare industry was rather slow to join the digital revolution, as opposed to financial and media industries over the last decade. However, new tools and technologies are already starting to make waves across the healthcare system and hold great promise to transform the delivery of health services in the near future – improving efficiency and bettering patient care. 

Hoefner points how digital is augmenting the growth of the healthcare sector:

-Digitalization of healthcare involves managing data as a strategic asset, integrating accurate data from fragmented sources, and creating a holistic understanding of patients and visibility of the healthcare enterprise with digital twins

-It also involves empowering data-driven decisions by leveraging analytics, benchmark insights, and using digital companions to simplify workflows and to enable decision support

-It connects care teams and patients for better coordination and knowledge sharing, thereby strengthening integrated care across the health system

-Digital technologies are making medicine more precise by improving diagnostic accuracy, reducing unwarranted variations, thereby helping in arriving at the right diagnosis and treatment quickly

-Digitalization is also transforming care delivery by increasing access to care, increasing the productivity of care providers, and optimizing clinical operations. It thereby enables delivery of high value care organized around the patient’s medical condition and providing the right care and doing care right

-It is also improving patient experience by delivering outcomes that matter to patients, optimizing the diagnostic experience, and engaging patients and families

Healthcare sector, a growth horizon for Indian economy?

“Globally, there is a need to make healthcare systems more efficient and enable more people access high quality healthcare. Of the seven trillion euros spent on healthcare globally, less than one percent is invested in technologies that boost the overall efficiency of these systems,” states Hoefner. 

India is moving towards quality healthcare at an affordable cost. In comparison the U.S., the cost of treatment is around 1/10th, while the clinical outcomes in leading hospitals are comparable with internationally recognized facilities. This has made India a medical hub. 

Also, India is a unique market with a huge, largely uninsured population that is extremely cost conscious and a healthcare system with a severe shortage of medical doctors and facilities necessitating the productive use of any healthcare resource. Constraints can be overcome with passion and purpose!