Speaking about the challenges and how digital evolution is revolutionising the healthcare, Shankar Kaul, MD, Elsevier said, “Currently, the healthcare sector is undergoing several disruptions and challenges. There is an increasing margin pressure on the corporate hospital chains. There could be several reasons behind this, including the significant price controls. But, disruptions also give birth to opportunities and hopefully Ayushman Bharat can be a great disruptor. The scheme holds a lot of promise which will result in significant investments both from the central and state governments.”
“The sector has three priorities. The first is providing patient care with high quality while being cost effective, as a result of which we will be able to reduce variability and improve coordination. Secondly, consistency in care delivery is critical, given the need for building robust mechanism sharing patient and clinical information across multiple hands off in the healthcare segment. The third is to maximise the team performance where a CEO or CXO gets to mould an effective workforce. In order to make this possible, we need to focus on people, process and technology,” he said.
Highlighting that there has been a significant investment to bring technology into healthcare, Kaul said, “Latest technology is imbibed in diagnostics, radiology and cutting-edge procedures. There have been investments in IT infrastructure but there is a gap in the physician and clinician understanding about its relevance in clinical care. Technology is the key enabler in making sure that knowledge becomes more accessible when it is required at the point of care.”
He added that with patient profiles and diseases evolving rapidly, the only way we can keep up with this evolution is by investing in technology. Standardisation of patient care through current, credible and evidence-based clinical decisions support will help the overall healthcare ecosystem.
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