Bridging Academia & Industry Gaps For Progress In ‘Amrit Kaal’

Anish Bafna Jul 20, 2022

The healthcare sector has greatly benefited from the timely development and commercialisation of multiple point-of-care (PoC) devices, integrated electronic health records systems, telemedicine systems, home-care services – all developed and connected by capable professionals in information and hardware technology that met the demands of the pandemic. Thanks to them, 1.4 billion people in India will have better healthcare access and quality of care.

The education sector has also shifted from traditional classroom-based teaching to the online education model. With the pandemic receding in India and as we get into the ‘now-normal’, the future could be based on ‘the blended-learning model of education’ – classroom and online model. Today, the education sector is innovating constantly to bring rural parts of the country into the schooling system through television, radio and internet-based platforms. The education programs for professionals have also seen significant uptake with many office-going professionals taking up online education to keep themselves updated with the latest learning to match the changing global requirements.

Identifying challenges and course correction

While the education system has tried to deliver the required workforce to the nation and to the world to meet the growing demands, there are still gaps that are seen by the healthcare industry leaders in finding the right talent to support them in their substance and growth journey. This largely stems from the current knowledge gaps that are seen in the graduates and postgraduates that are ready to join the workforce.

The India Skills Report 2021 shows that only 45.9 per cent of graduates were found to be employable. This value was 46.21 in the year 2020 and 47.38 per cent in 2019 respectively. Therefore, it is increasingly becoming difficult to find the right talent pool to fuel the information technology (IT) and digitisation rigour that the country has embarked upon.

The industry acted upon the current limitations of talent with automation and standardisation of tasks through digitisation. However, this did not solve the problem of market insights and dynamic based research and development. This needed brilliant human minds to think up solutions to take organisations into the future. This is where health-tech and Medtech industry-academia partnerships can make a difference.

Leaping into the future through industry-academia partnerships

The industry has a clear understanding of the current market requirements and how the future outlook is going to be. Therefore, the industry can foresee, learn and adapt quickly to the market changes. This agility has also provided the industry leaders with enough insight into the changes that have to be made to the current academic courses to develop the right talent pool to meet the industry's demand. Some of these could be on the lines of:

Industry requirements and curriculum alignment: The current academic courses are very theory-heavy with little application to the changing demands of the industry requirements. Therefore, if the course curriculum is revised every five years in discussion with the industry leaders on the future expectations from the young professionals, there are higher chances for the academia to meet the expectations of the industry.

Focus on skill and application-based education: To bridge the gap between academic courses and industry requirements, organisations like National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) have started partnership programs with several technical institutions to cover the skills and application gaps of the students from their institutions. Similar programs can be conducted by other institutions like NAT HEALTH and other industry fora.

Increase internships and live-project partnerships: As a part of the curriculum, providing students with an opportunity to work on long-term projects right from their first year will prepare the student to the reality of learning and applying their learnings at work. This will also help in continuously aligning the academic curriculum with the industry

Faculty up-skilling: One of the limitations of academic institutions is to find and maintain good academic guides that can train their students to be productive in the industry as soon as they graduate. This can only happen if the faculty members teaching the students understand and upgrade themselves constantly to the evolving market and industry changes. Hence, continuous training of the faculty in professional institutions should be facilitated.

As we progress into ‘Amrit Kaal’, the industries can come together to upgrade the future professionals to meet the common goals of the industry and the country. The industries should work together with the academic decision-makers to constantly upgrade ourselves as we strive towards ‘Make in India, for the World’.