In early August, I had the opportunity to lead a panel of doctors and technologists on an interesting topic; “New Technologies shaping the world: Will healthcare take the quantum leap?”
The members in the panel were
· Dr Kirti Chadha, Vice President – Metropolis Healthcare Ltd.
· Dr Vidur Mahajan, Associate Director, Mahajan Imaging
· Ravi Ramaswamy, Sr. Director, Philips Healthsystems
· ShivaKumar KR, Fellow & Global Architect, Philips
· Sampath Herga, CEO of Hyper Chain Private Limited
If you entered a hospital in India, in the year 2030 what would you see? Would you see an OPD with patients milling around, standing in line for the doctor to see them? Will he then be sent from department to department depending on what tests and diagnostics need to be done? Will there be wards with patients admitted, undergoing treatment and watched over by an army of nurses and paraclinical staff?
What happened to the promise of personalised healthcare? What about Remote Patient Monitoring? or Population Health? Did these live up to the promises?
To understand the healthcare of the future, we need to find out what we are doing today to build the future healthcare of tomorrow. Last month I was at the Smart Tech Healthcare Summit, where I caught up with my good friend and Healthcare Leader Dr Ashwin Naik. Ashwin and I first met at the Philips Digital Health Conclave in 2015 where he first talked about the hospital of tomorrow.
According to him the hospital of tomorrow, may not have wards, or departments for that matter. It will only have an ICU, Emergency, and wards for palliative care. We continued that thought process when we met this time and I personally wanted to see if he has changed his opinion since 2015.
To my surprise, Ashwin still stands by his earlier opinion and he gave me further reasons to believe that the hospital of tomorrow would be more of a monitoring center, more like a NOC. While patients would be monitored from their house, speeding up recovery and returning the patient to full functionality. Below is a recording of this conversation.
As always I would love to have your opinion on this topic. Please do let me know how do you envisage the healthcare of tomorrow?
Reading Dr Vikram’s post on “is-health-insurance-the-answer-to-indias-healthcare-woes?” made me think. Well, in the United States, despite healthcare being the highest capita spend of the GDP as per Organization for economic Co-operation and development (OECD) survey. But yet still we are unable to meet the healthcare needs of the population. That made me think – Is having insurance (private and public) the answer to India’s healthcare issues?
I would like to give my perspective whether we should invest heavily in insurance and the role of the government, based on my knowledge of Unites States healthcare systems.
Finally some validation for us Tennis players. Playing tennis can help you live longer according to a study by Oxford and some researchers in Finland and Australia. The study was conducted over a period of 9 years over a pool of 80,000 people mostly of Scottish and English descent.
These people consisted of 52% women and 48 % men. The mean age was 52 +- 14 years. The study covered key sports and recreation activities like Running, Football (Soccer for my American friends), Swimming, Running, Tennis, Cycling, Aerobics and Racquet Sports. The study looked for correlation in all cause mortality and Cardio Vascular Related Mortality.
Healthcare in India is at an exciting phase in its evolution. On one side we have government policy that has ensured that standards have been set for EMR, medical Records and Standards, while on the other hand we see very large hospitals adopting digital in order to increase access and improve care outcomes. But the key to innovation in healthcare are startups and new ventures coming up with innovative care models that are changing the course of the healthcare industry in India.
At the Philips Digital Health Conclave, I had the opportunity to discuss and exchange ideas with many thought leaders in the healthcare space. I spoke to Dr Pinak Shrikhande, Principal at Healthquad and Director at Critinext, a India’s largest Tele-ICU service provider. Below are some of the excerpts from the discussion.
