Dr Satyender Goel, Founder & CEO, India Health Link (IHL) emphasises that less than 5 years after announcing ‘The National Health Policy, 2017’ with one of its aims to establish “Health and Wellness Centres” though just reached its goal of 1,50,000 Centres across India. We are still way behind the goal of making primary healthcare accessible to all Indians
The Indian healthcare system is in the throes of change as it takes steps to revolutionize the segment by learning from the nuances in existing infrastructure disparity among various countries, developed and developing. Look at primary healthcare being the backbone of healthcare systems in India, is still impoverished. Rural primary care is underfunded and has shortages of staff, equipment, drugs and infrastructure in many parts of the country. And urban primary healthcare has still not emerged as an active programme in many States. Less than 5 years after announcing ‘The National Health Policy, 2017’ with one of its aims to establish “Health and Wellness Centres” though just reached its goal of 1,50,000 Centres across India. We are still way behind the goal of making primary healthcare accessible to all Indians.
Understandably, India needs to not only open these new centres but also need to properly staff them along with filling the existing primary health infrastructure gap in the country. This has been a major struggle followed by a visionary action/step of deploying health-tech along with telemedicine to rapidly counter the situation. The recent announcement of UP’s Chief Minister Shri Yogi Adityanath Ji to enable up to 4600 Community Health Centres (CHCs) and Primary Health Centres (PHCs) with rapid screening health ATMs is a breakthrough step in providing healthcare access at centres with a shortage of paramedic staff.
Though the government’s aspirations are commendable for advancing healthcare forward, the actual path to achieving success will require a careful and thought-out plan for choosing the right health-tech platform. There are several key factors which can impact the success of the current approach. Durability – are these devices able to stay online for months, or years with normal usage? Testing/compatibility – are these devices been clinically vetted at an Indian hospital or clinic for the use by Indian patient population? Privacy & Security – do they provide enough privacy to the patient at the time of use in an open setting etc? ROI – post-deployment usage analytics, and staffing – skillset required to operate these devices to avoid the similar conundrum of paramedic shortage.
A lot of innovative start-ups have already come forward with affordable and physical health solutions but are they scalable and trustable? In my opinion, there is an easy way to put them all to the test by giving them all an opportunity to perform in the same demographics. This natural competition will automatically let the best solution shine and force others to further innovate.
A recent NITI Aayog report highlighted that 50 per cent of India’s population has access to 65 percent of hospital beds, thus indicating a strong need to strengthen healthcare infrastructure for ensuring equitable access to all. The government needs to be progressive in their approach to cater to the huge primary healthcare gap in India. The actual path to achieving success is only possible if we design a fully coordinated, digitally enabled healthcare system that reduces the cost of care delivery and reduces human dependency while delivering care.
Thus, India will leapfrog in their quest to provide healthcare at the last mile of the country by combining digital health technology with point-of-care medical devices in the primary healthcare ecosystem.