As India continues its battle against COVID19, the concept of resilience has rapidly evolved to include not only resilience of health systems but also of businesses, workplaces, leadership, community, lifestyle and collaborations. This has opened up new areas of partnerships and collaborations. It is heartening to see the government and industry working in solidarity, which has significantly alleviated the impact of the pandemic. In this regard, to identify and discuss post-pandemic structure and highlight emerging imperatives towards building a strong public health system in India, CII organised its annual flagship Public Health Summit 2021 with the theme ‘Emerging Imperatives in Strengthening Public Health for India’ on 28 June 2021
Ms K Sujatha Rao Advisor, Former Secretary Ministry of Health and Family Welfare said that, health systems are culture specific. India has often tried to implement health system practices of other countries. It needs to be realised that heath systems are unique to a country and the growth needs to be organic linked to population needs. There is a need for a robust vigilance and surveillance system which would need a public policy built on data and evidence aided by intelligent use of technology. Dr Giridhar R Babu Professor and Head-Life-course Epidemiology Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI) emphasised that public health is not the responsibility of the government alone but also academia, media, healthcare delivery bodies and industries from other sectors. He said, “ We are focussing more and more on sickness and less on public health systems and competencies. It is time to ensure to encompass life course of individuals and make sure living conditions are also improved.” With respect to industry involvement he said that, “ We need to look not only at the quantity but also quality of industry contribution in public health. For the next decade to look at the industry leaders to have embedded public health specialists in their teams for more meaningful engagement with community. Dr Om P Manchanda Managing Director Dr. Lal PathLabs Ltd. said that healthcare information currently lies in silos. What is missing is that there is no one view of patient information. Our endeavour should be to pool all information in one place. With technology coming in lot of data can be centralised. Dr Shahid Jameel Indian Virologist Director, Trivedi School of Biosciences Ashoka University said that, “ COVID has given a fantastic opportunity to use science and technology to find solutions. Private sector should therefore adopt science. Government expenditure on science needs to increase with support from private sector. There is lot of opportunity to fund high risk high reward research which will more likely to give rise to innovation
Mr Shravan Subramanyam, President & CEO, GE Healthcare India & South Asia Wipro GE moderating the session on technology as a health enabler stated that in-efficiencies in the global health systems is a global problem. In Public health systems performance management is an absolute priority.Automation, scale and skill is required. Prof Itamar Grotto, Former- Head of the Public Health Services, Ministry of Health, Israel highlighted that a good database helped Israel deal with this pandemic. If we had these kind of data systems to look at other healthcare scenarios, it would have helped in the past. We need to promote data sharing and analysis more in the healthcare system
Mr Narendra Varde, Managing Director, Roche Diagnostics Private Limited stated The one thing the pandemic taught us is that prevention is better than cure. We need to bring automation to the districts, we need to focus on precision medicine and personalized healthcare. That is the ultimate goal, with AI and predictive tools, we should be able to analyze data and predict what kind of course of treatment people should get. Dr Sandeep Dewan, Managing Director, Health Training Asia stated due to covid, telemedicine has come to the fore in clinical practice. In India, there is a shortage of specialists in remote areas, especially critical care specialists. This was further compounded due to COVID as the number of ICU bed requirements surged. Digital health comprising of telemedicine, diagnostics and pharmacies serves every pin code in the country stated Mr Shashank ND, Co-Founder and CEO, Practo Technologies Private Limited. Every Indian has access to quality doctors, quality medicines and diagnostics. This is limited to access to internet and mobile phones, however in time it will cover a larger base as well. 50 million to 100 million annual tele consultations were happening prior to COVID and now we’re going to see billions of tele consultations happen in the country going forward.
Speaking at the session on Funding Health and Human Resource Development Mr Srini Nagarajan MD & Head – Asia CDC Group said that the nature of healthcare investment is that it is long gestation. Developing a commercial model in tier 2 and tier 3 is not viable or possible. We should look at investing beyond tertiary care. We need to look at healthcare from the developmental lens of inclusivity, sustainability and productivity. Dr Pranav Mohan Investment Officer International Finance Corporation (IFC) stated that in India 80,000 workforce will be soon entering the medical profession in the next few years. Private sector has to absorb this capacity. Moreover, Government will need to support private sector expansion in tier 2 and 3 cities. Dr Shubnum Singh Advisor Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) said that to have an effective medical workforce recruitment rules in the Government needs to change, career progression needs to be provided to those being trained and funders need to ensure that the institution they are funding invest in the training of workforce. Dr Yamini Aiyar President and Chief Executive Center for Policy Research said that with reference to medical education there is a need to push for transparent medical regulation which needs collaboration from public and private stakeholders. Dr Chirag Adatia Partner McKinsey & Company said that India can provide healthcare access and infrastructure to its population only by going digital. India truly has the potential to be a home for digital innovation. Mr Arvind Kumar Project Management Specialist USAID India said that the areas that they are currently focusing on are training of healthcare workers, skill building, augmenting pool of healthcare providers and introducing innovation in training procedures.
(Continued in Part 2)