Call for more service providers in healthcare industry

The Indian healthcare industry needs more service providers and therefore more investment, according to the industry representatives who spoke at the (Indian School of Business) ISB Healthcare & Pharma Summit 2005 on Saturday.

The panelists also spoke on the need for innovation, research, full utilisation of technology and better health information system in the Indian healthcare industry.

Delivering the keynote address, Prathap Reddy, chairman, Apollo Hospitals, said, "It is expected that by 2012, 50 per cent of the world heart diseases will be in India and this will increase to 60 per cent by 2016. The current number of healthcare service providers will not be sufficient to meet these growing needs. We, therefore, need more service providers in the healthcare sector."

"The healthcare industry currently employs four million people. In the next few decades, this industry is likely to employ 30 million people. The industry is, therefore, growing at a rapid pace. The challenge, however, is with regard to full utilisation of technology in medicine and adopting new kinds of research like nanotechnology and genetics," Reddy added.

According to Analjit Singh, chairman of Max India Limited, health information system (HIS) was the epitome of customer orientation and it can help in adding to the success rate of treatments.

"Around 40 per cent of the deaths in the US happen because of inaccurate reading of prescription," he corroborated.

While accepting that India has moved from being a healthcare seeker to healthcare provider, Sangita Reddy, managing director of Apollo Health Street, said that still a lot that needs to be done.

"The healthcare industry needs to look at other industries in this regard as it has been among the last to adopt processes like Six Sigma and customer relationship management," she said, adding that India needed $30 billion to support the healthcare industry in the next 10 years. She also called for declaration of healthcare as an infrastructure.