India ready to lead technology-driven diabetes care, says Jitendra Singh

Union minister Jitendra Singh on Sunday said India is fast becoming a huge medical tourism hub and it is ready to lead technology-driven diabetes care.

Addressing the three-day World Congress of 'Diabetes Technology and Therapeutics 2023' (DTechCon 2023) here, he said the country is being looked up to by the rest of the world in the field of healthcare after the successful handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Technologically and in human resources, we are much ahead of most other countries," said Singh, the Minister of State for Personnel.

He said India is not only becoming a technology leader, but also a huge medical tourism hub.

"India is ready to lead technology-driven diabetes care," said Singh, who is also a renowned diabetologist.

He said India is in the frontline of diabetes research in the world and the prevention of diabetes is not only "our duty towards healthcare, but also our duty towards nation building because this is a country with 70 per cent population below the age of 40 and the youth of today are going to be the prime citizens of India@2047".

"We cannot afford to let their energy get squandered in incapacitating complications occurring as a result of Diabetes Mellitus and other related disorders or its complications," the minister cautioned.

He said in the field of telemedicine, the country has some of the best start-ups in the world.

"These start-up groups have developed AI (artificial intelligence) doctors," the minister said and cited an example of its application.

Singh said his team selected about 60 remote villages in his Lok Sabha constituency --Udhampur in Jammu and Kashmir -- and engaged a telemedicine van called Doctor on Wheels'.

The team ran it for three months in all 60 villages and the best of consultations were provided in a very short time, he said.

Singh said India is fast becoming more tech savvy, particularly after Narendra Modi took over as the prime minister because he is personally promoting science and technology innovations.

"This is evident from the fact that there were just around 350 start-ups before 2014, but after Modi gave the clarion call from the ramparts of the Red Fort in his Independence Day address, and rolled out special StartUp scheme in 2016, there has been a quantum jump in start-ups to more than 90,000 with more than 100 unicorns," Singh said, adding that India is also rated number 3 in the StartUp ecosystem of the world.

He said, similarly, Modi opened up the space sector for private participation leading to more than 100 StartUps in the space sector within just about three years.

Similarly, biotech start-ups went up from around 50 in 2014 to nearly 6,000 today, Singh said.