'Significant technological investment needed for cancer treatment in India'

Sasidhar, the new president and chief executive officer of Apollo's hospital division, talks about future expansion, medical tourism, and growth roadmap

Apollo, one of the world’s largest vertically integrated healthcare providers, is in the process of massive expansion with eight to nine projects at different planning stages. Madhu Sasidhar, the new president and chief executive officer of its hospital division, talks to Shine Jacob about future expansion, medical tourism, and growth roadmap.

What will be your priorities after taking charge of one of the largest healthcare groups? 

As I assess Apollo's position and our approach to addressing the healthcare needs of the country, one of the priorities will be growth. The country is expanding and one out of five under the age of 25 lives in India. Growth in population will continue for the next twenty-plus years. Healthcare needs of the country are going to be tremendous and we want to serve that through our hospitals, telemedicine and 24x7 clinics. 

When we grow we want to focus more on the vision of our founder, which is exceptional quality in outcomes. We also want to improve access to healthcare.

Your revenue was around Rs 16,600 crore last year. When you say growth, where do you expect to see this? 

When I talk about growth, I want to put the patient at the centre of all our decisions. It is not revenue, but rather the number of patients we handle, that will be the prism through which I want to view it. Next year (2024-25), our in-patient business is expected to grow by 11 per cent. In the coming year, we are not adding many beds. Most of this growth will come from our existing system. Post-financial year 2025, we will add several new hospitals and beds. Overall, there are eight to nine projects that are in different stages of planning. This includes our project in Gurgaon.

How do you see medical tourism in India and Apollo's role in it?

We have a highly educated young workforce in this country. From Apollo's perspective, we believe that we have an exceptionally high-quality healthcare system. We want to make it available to a larger number of patients. Our share of international patients is around 8-10 per cent. Not all of our hospitals see international patients, as not all of them are connected. If you take our major hubs, that number is as high as 15-20 per cent. This will continue to grow with people from more countries coming in.

Countries around us, such as Bangladesh and Myanmar, have historically relied on us for healthcare. I see demand coming from Africa and Southeast Asian countries such as Indonesia, Timor-Leste, and the Philippines. Now, advanced economies are also considering our country for cost-effective treatment.

We are looking for overseas expansion too. We have a presence today in Chittagong through a partnership. Africa and West Asia too are interesting countries for us. 

Your recent report highlighted the situation of rising cancer cases. How are things developing in terms of newer cancer care?

For countries like India, a significant amount of technological investment is needed to address cancer. We just added ZAP-X, which is a dedicated radiosurgery instrument for brain cancer. It is the first of its kind. It allows people to get brain cancer treated non-invasively in an outpatient setting. 

The other advanced technology in cancer treatment that we are looking at is immunotherapy. In collaboration with other entities, we have started this, and will be revolutionary for conditions like lymphoma that are otherwise not treatable.

You have 70 hospitals, 6000 pharmacies, 530 clinics and around 1,800 diagnostic centers. How are you going to take this forward and integrate?

Our goal is to ensure that every Indian can access Apollo. We will expand aggressively. We will expand through bricks and bytes. In integration, there is a people's component and also a technology component to it. The technology component is that we have one unified personal health record, regardless of which Apollo you go to. We believe that Apollo is poised to take quality to the next level soon. This is going to be our mantra. 

What is India's situation as far as non-communicable diseases (NCDs) are concerned? 

We have been talking about NCDs for the last 30 years. In India, we have dealt well with communicable diseases, through public health campaigns. Our country is rapidly transitioning to a Western lifestyle. There is a dramatic change happening in nutrition to highly processed foods, in activity level, too much secondary lifestyle, and intentional or unintentional exposure to environmental pollution. What all of them combine to do is give you a higher risk of cancer and metabolic diseases. If you look at the adult population, 40 per cent of patients have fatty liver. Because we have a young population, we have not seen the accumulated risk of these. Apollo is not just taking care of the sick, but also promoting health.