Healthcare gets a brand

IN CONVERSATION

Kushagra Katariya

With less than four weeks to go for the opening of Artemis Health Sciences (AHS), an Apollo Tyres Group promoted 500-bed hospital and medical institute in Gurgaon, RADHIEKA PANDEYA met Kushagra Katariya, CEO, AHS, to find out what sets it apart from others.

What are you offering that other corporate hospitals are not?

AHS has a lot of firsts to its credit in India. Our cutting edge medical equipment allows us to do things no one else in India can do. For this hospital, we are bringing the Diffusion Weighted Imaging for Body Scanning (DWIBS) to India "" a breakthrough technique for imaging possible lesions throughout the body.

There will also be MRI-PET fusion technology that will allow better scanning for detection of cancer and the linear accelerator technology for radiation treatments for cancer patients and, for the first time in the world, we are getting an optical mammography machine for breast cancer detection. Across north India, we will have referral centres where patients would be able to access our telemedicine service.

This is the only hospital in India to be filmless and paperless. All records and treatments will be integrated with the Hospital Information System, making data easily accessible. A lot of back-end know-how has gone into the making of the institute.

Like other hospitals, we will not have departments and department heads. Instead, we will have clusters or groups of doctors dealing with a particular medical area who will collectively take a call on the best treatment option for a patient. This may be a little time-consuming and tedious but it will work very well for the patients.

How much has been invested in the hospital and when do you hope to break even? How do you compare with other corporate hospitals in your pricing?

We have invested Rs 200 crore in the first phase of the hospital and institute and are looking at a third-year break even. In fact, a large part of our cost has reduced because of our strategic partnership with Philips. We plan to set up 15 more hospitals in more than seven cities by 2015.

How are you set to benefit from your $7 million partnership with Philips?

Our partnership with Philips for our flagship hospital in Gurgaon makes us the only hospital in India to enjoy such a partnership. This partnership is a give-and-take collaboration. For Philips, it gives them access to invaluable research data that will be conducted by our R&D arm. Medical research in India is still restricted to pharmaceuticals.

However, at Artemis, we will research and develop indigenous medical technology and upgrade existing technology. In return, 60 per cent of the medical equipment required by the institute will be provided by Philips.

This means that we will be the first in India to get any new technology developed by Philips. In fact, since high-tech medical equipment is not manufactured in India, and is very expensive to import, it has come to us at very low costs because of our partnership.

What challenges did you face in getting medical experts?

It is true that there is a major shortage of medical experts in India, considering the growing corporate hospitals. You can either get above average, average, or below average people, and there is always a fight for those above average.

So, we had a tough time. Though we have taken people from other corporate hospitals across India, we have also brought doctors and specialists from overseas.

Indians who wanted to return to the country were more than willing to join us. Currently, 10 per cent of the hospital's doctors are from overseas, and among the senior doctors this figure goes up to 25 per cent.