Top 5 trends that are poised to reshape India’s health care sector in the next 5 years

In the past decade, technology has been a transformational force for countless industries and sectors across the globe, healthcare included. We witnessed the agility and power of tech first-hand during the pandemic when thousands of patients turned to telemedicine for health-related services and information. Despite this progress made by technology, healthcare systems across the world remain broken and are in need of a significant overhaul. This is especially true for India where the sheer volume of patients, insufficient resources and vast geographical expanse pose major challenges to healthcare delivery. However, digitisation and technologies such as AI and Machine Learning offer great promise when it comes to reshaping the sector. Keeping this in mind, below are the top five developments to watch out for in Indian healthcare.

1.Care management and coordination: The current healthcare system is a disjointed one with healthcare providers, payers and patients operating in silos. This is leading to a lack of information transparency and overall accountability of care, thereby creating a trust deficit. For example, when a patient is in the hospital, there are thorough medical records that are in place, however, post visit, there is no standard data-collection mechanism to track patient health. Although there are scores of apps in the market that function in the healthcare space, most of them focus on delivering and pushing for higher utilisation of services. We are, thus, in need of holistic or comprehensive care management pathways that can help coordinate care with the network of patients, hospitals, and payers in order to optimise patient care and develop more value-based healthcare models.

2.Personalisation of care: From genetic makeup to environmental factors, our health is dependent on myriad factors. Hence, we need systems that can factor in these multiple data points in order to build personalised healthcare plans for each person. Backend systems that are powered by AI/ML models have the power to do this. Take for instance, the needs of a patient with diabetes v/s someone with diabetes, high cholesterol and hypertension. It is clear that the person with three chronic conditions should be classified as a complex patient who will need continuous health monitoring with more frequent touch points. Holistic health care systems that leverage the power of tech and data have the ability to offer personalised medical care, allowing more need-based hospitalisations, improved patient satisfaction, and less stress for payers —a win-win situation for all stakeholders involved.

3.Transforming Healthcare Providers: At present, hospitals work to expand their capacity and drive up revenue by increasing their footfalls i.e. dispensing more healthcare services. However, with staffing shortages and poor patient experience plaguing hospitals, this may not be the best model for the future. In order to maximise revenue without necessarily increasing capacity, there is a need for comprehensive and alternative care delivery mechanisms to be put in place. In essence, holistic care mechanisms categorise patients based on risk: as high, moderate and low. In hospitals today, it is mostly the low to moderate risk patients that flood the hallways and to manage this cohort of patients—who contribute to the hospital revenue in rather small amounts—there is a large number of hospital staff involved. In the future, such patients can be shifted to a remote-care model whereby most of their healthcare can be dispensed via home visits and tele/video consultations. This way, hospitals have the liberty to free up and rearrange/divert their resources towards managing high-risk patients in a more effective manner without compromising the patient experience.

4.Whole Patient Approach: Care Management entities need to recalibrate their current approach that revolves around managing a patient for a single disease/condition. There has to be a whole patient approach to a patient’s health that takes into consideration what the WHO calls “the social determinants of health” (SDOH), i.e. information related to where a person is born, what they eat, where they work, what local air pollution levels are they exposed to and/or whether they have access to safe housing and a stable income. These factors in addition to the clinical inputs play a major role in personalising the whole patient care management plan that addresses the compliance checks in a holistic manner.

5. Continuous education and awareness: Better healthcare requires relentless commitment from all those involved, this includes patients and their attitudes towards healthcare. In order to optimise outcomes, care coordinators and managers need to be at the heart of a communication network that continuously follows up and educates patients post hospitalisation and physician visits. 

Thus, tech-based independent monitoring tools and AI/ML-driven data management systems hold immense potential to actualise this vision of a new healthcare ecosystem – one where patients, healthcare providers and payers work in synergy to improve outcomes for all those involved.