'Healthcare not yet a national agenda,' ex Fortis CEO

BENGALURU: Healthcare needs to be made into a national agenda if India aims to provide affordable means of treatment based on new age technology to its citizens, Vishal Bali, co-founder of home health services company, Medwell Ventures, said.

Bali said on Friday if the government is able to take its Digital India campaign effectively to the rural interiors, and use technology to bring health data from there into a digital platform; it will be a quantum leap for the country.

“One of the biggest issues in India is healthcare is not a national agenda for us. This is not a sectorial need but a need for the advancement of healthcare for the country One of the big challenges you have in this country is when you make healthcare as a national agenda, you will come up with more missions and more opportunity creation to deliver healthcare to the last mile,” according to Bali.

The Indian healthcare market is expected to grow to $280 billion by 2020, from about $100 billion currently and is growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 22.9%, according to a report by India Brand Equity Foundation. Healthcare delivery, which includes hospitals, nursing homes and diagnostics centers, and pharmaceuticals, constitutes 65% of the overall market.

“In budget after budget every year, we have the same conversation of how the government should spend more than 1% of India’s GDP on healthcare and the government continues to spend 1%. The remaining 4.2% of the GDP on healthcare comes from private sector which means 80% of India pays out of their own pocket,” Bali, who was the CEO of Fortis Healthcare, said on the sidelines of a Philips Digital Healthcare Conclave.

Bali’s Medwell, which raised $10 million in Series A funding from Fidelity Growth Partners India and Fidelity Biosciences earlier this year, provides home healthcare services for chronic diseases in the out-of-hospital space.

Bali said venture capitalists have invested $108 million in healthcare startups in India in the last one year, the highest till date, as they bet big on these companies’ efforts to change the healthcare landscape in the country by using disruptive technology

“Disruption created by technology is creating affordability in the healthcare space and mobile connectivity should be used as one of the most powerful tools to create a digital healthcare platform,” Bali said.