Digital technologies are key growth drivers

How is the radiology industry growing and what are the current advancements in the field?

Indian radiology sector is in the phase of continuous evolution and will remain a key growth segment for many medical institutions in their aspirations of becoming  ‘gold standard in care giving’.

In my opinion, radiology users in India stands divided in six segments:

• Private corporate large hospitals including hospital chains
• Smaller multi speciality/ super speciality hospitals
• Diagnostic Centres – privately held and corporate chains
• Large network of govt hospitals, PHC’s and CHC’s
• Private and Govt academic centres
• Other sectors like orthopaedic clinics

With increasing installed base of radiology solutions and changing trends of care giving, radiology product market is experiencing pull for ‘value for money’ segment. Innovation is the key driver behind every product offering. Intelligent marketers will be able to experience growth of 10 per cent YOY.

“Digital India”, “Public Private Partnership” and “Make In India” initiative by Government of India will push the medical devices manufacturer to offer tailor made India centric, creative solutions to the fast changing public services sector.

Latest offerings in the area of CT/ MRI are reaching large govt and privately owned institutional customers catering to small mass of elite patients. Disruptive marketing and examination pricing can make large change in the way mass population of India will receive benefits of such innovative solutions across India. Growing awareness and need to counter cancer threat will also drive product, institutions and company growth in this segment. Increasing patient awareness in area like Mammography, at patient level and Govt level, will also contribute positively.

Large mass of ortho centres and nursing homes treating patients for various ailments will drive growth of digital X-ray in urban and rural area.

How would you rank the Indian radiology market?

There is a clear difference, how Radiology examinations are treated in US, Europe and developing markets like India.

While technology solutions to enhance clinical capabilities and speed of conducting an examination using hardware and software solutions, has reached Indian shores, volume of examinations conducted are far more in India.

Commercial considerations per examinations in India are also far lower. In terms of clinical results of examinations conducted, I am of the opinion that India offers some of the best talents, resulting in lot of reporting workload being diverted to India from developed countries. This has resulted in some organisations running business models of remote diagnosis using technologies and internet intelligently.

Are digital technologies disrupting the sector in India? And How?

Digital technologies, are key growth drivers going forward. However, price points at which radiology examinations are conducted, makes decision of complete digitisation a challenge.

Homegrown solutions or Indianised IT solutions can offer an alternate path for this sector. Key considerations for technical and clinical validations of these solutions and benchmarking them with international standards will remain a challenge. Enterprise wide adaptation of IT will hinge on the Return on Investment experienced by varying customer profiles.

Public services sector will face further challenges in selecting workable solutions, which are technically advanced, future ready and are designed to meet tendering process followed.

What is your company’s focus in the Indian market?

Agfa Healthcare is one of the pioneers in digital imaging solutions including Direct Radiography(DR), Computed Radiography (CR) and associated printing solutions. More than 5000 customers across India, believes in our product capabilities and have placed their faith with us to offer innovative new technologies in their quest to serve their patients more efficiently. Our focus will be, to be customer centric, and help them by increasing bandwidth of our offerings.

What are your expectations from this event?

AOCR 2018, being one of the largest radiology event in Asia, will surely attract respected radiologist not only from India but from countries in ASEAN. Agfa Healthcare is proud to be ‘gold’ partner in this event with a large booth exhibiting some of our latest innovations and technologies.

Agfa Healtcare is celebrating 150 years of our presence in this industry with special event planned for the same during AOCR.

We expect to reinforce our strong presence in this industry with brand and product promotion programme charted for this event.

Are there any product launches?

At AOCR 2018 will be our launch pad for key technologies in the area of mammography and DR.

How will attending the AOCR 2018 add value to your business plans for India?

Key event like AOCR offers necessary exposure and attention for brand like AGFA. Product launch, live demonstrations offers best results during such shows. We strongly believe that Agfa Healthcare will be able to propel its commitment to radiology using this show. We remain committed to our tag line “Care You Can See”.