Traditionally, healthcare has been about treating specific ailments. However, the onset of a global pandemic has shifted the entire outlook of accessing, managing, and monitoring the health cycle of a person.
Like in other segments that include commerce, entertainment, payments, the Indian healthcare system has embraced a digital future that is enabled with consumerising healthcare services through technology. Advances in fields like AI and ML are making new modes of care possible.
E-pharmacies fulfill prescriptions, wearable devices monitor wearers’ health in real time, tele-medicine platforms connect patients with physicians, and home tests enable self-diagnosis. Consumerism of healthcare has elevated patient care and personalised treatments like never before. Healthcare over a phone app, or video conference is the norm now, where both consumers and caregivers have received a taste of the convenience of digital.
The advent of consumerism has also improved the quality of healthcare services in India, with service providers now being more accountable to patients. The increasing number of healthtech companies has also given rise to competition, thus in turn improving quality of care, pricing, timeline of treatments, and the overall supply chain from primary care clinics to hospitals to doctors to tertiary and specialty care providers to diagnostic and imaging labs to pharma companies and finally insurance companies to keep the consumer delighted.
With healthcare consumers now more willing to adopt tools and share data and adopt virtual visits, new digital tools can play an important role in the future of care—from monitoring a person’s health, to helping individuals get access to more convenient care, to facilitate the low doctor-patient ratio in India, through remote diagnosis and online consultation, to establish secured 24X7 online monitoring tools for geriatric care, among other services.
When deployed optimally, these tools have the potential to increase consumer satisfaction, improve medication adherence, and help consumers track and monitor their health including signs and symptoms that may alert them to the need for care.
The roundtable ‘Healthcare at a click’ will feature new-age healthcare companies, startups in the healthtech segment, healthcare and management services, insurance companies, technology and healthtech experts, to discuss future solutions for a sector that is extremely fast growing and adapting rapidly to technology.
Hosted by YourStory and Google Cloud, the aim is to bring players from the segment on a common platform to discuss technology opportunities, identify challenges, and create a dialogue for future solutions.
Our esteemed panelists include Manish Sharma, Google Cloud; Khushboo Aggarwal, Founder, Zyla Health; Hari Thalapalli, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), CallHealth; Gaurav Kataria, Chief Digital and Information Officer (CDIO), Sai Life Sciences; Maloy Ghosh, Chief Scientific Officer (CSO), Zumutor Biologics; Amit Sharma, Chief Information Officer, (CIO), Cytecare Hospitals; and Nitthin Chandran, Chief Executive Officer, MedPiper Technologies, who will offer future forward insights on the healthtech sector.
To all stakeholders, founders, and experts from the healthtech sector, this is your chance to understand how the consumerism of healthcare has brought in innovation for the sector, with technology advances that are shaping the future of healthcare services.