Future bright for home healthcare segment

Pune: Home healthcare, which is in its nascent stages now, is the next big thing in the country.

This is what experts observed while speaking at a panel discussion in the pre-conference symposium of the three-day international conference — SYMHEALTH 2017 — on Thursday.

“Home healthcare is essentially the service of a doctor at your doorstep. Various health parameters such as blood pressure can be checked without leaving home. This comes handy for the patients who are aged or undergoing long-term treatment. Employing this service, time of a specialist as well as that of the patient can be saved,” Rajiv Yeravdekar, gynaecologist and dean of the faculty of health and biomedical sciences at Symbiosis International University, said.

The home healthcare segment, which is currently valued between $2 billion to $3 billion in the country, is expected to be worth $6.21 billion by 2021. However, this growth does not come without challenges.

Anuradha Sunil, chairperson and managing director of Indicare Health Solutions Pvt Ltd, said, “The home healthcare segment comes with challenges too. Primary among these is the perception barrier in the country where a home nurse is looked upon as a maid and even asked to carry out domestic chores,” she said.

Mahesh Joshi, chief executive officer of Apollo Homecare, said a major issue here is accreditation. “There is no standardisation for the segment in India. The accreditation standards are not difficult to chalk out, but implementing them in India will be a challenge,” he said.

The session was chaired by group captain Suchitra Mankar, founder of the Doorstep Health Services.