First CII Digital Health Summit 2022 Organised In Delhi
Confederation of Indian Industry organised the first edition of Digital Health Summit on Wednesday in Delhi at Taj Maansingh Hotel with the theme “Leveraging Technology to build Patient-Centric,Inclusive,Integrated Health”.
While delivering the Welcome Address at the Inaugural Session, Shashank ND, Chairman, CII Subcommittee on Digital Health & CEO & Co-Founder, Practo highlighted that in India, 600 million plus people have access to internet. Internet is the best invention of our generation. Rising usage of technology has given Indians better access to healthcare cohort. There are many policy challenges both for the policy makers and the industry. All healthcare service providers should come together for self regulation, he added.
Dr Naresh Trehan, Chairman, CII national Healthcare Council and Chairman & Managing Director, Medanta, Medicty while delivering his remarks at the Inaugural Session, mentioned that digital revolution started many years back in the healthcare sector with the need for a monitor. It has evolved over the years and now with the help of technology we can monitor the functioning of various organs of the body, he added. He also emphasised on the importance of value addition to patients. Technology like video consultation can help in cutting down multiple travels of a patient to a different destination for receiving treatment, he added.
Dr R S Sharma, CEO, National Health Authority in his address highlighted the importance of technology in addressing India’s hard problems. He also highlighted that technology can add immense value in the healthcare sector. He also highlighted that one of the visions of Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission was improving healthcare services through digitisation. While addressing the audience on importance of digitization, he elaborated on the success of Aadhar Card project. He highlighted that so far 71 billion authentication has been done as on today. The next achievement of the Government was developing a payment platform, called UPI. In June 2022 itself, 600 billion transactions have taken place on UPI platform, he highlighted. During COVID, more digitisation of healthcare took place due to restrictions on visiting hospitals. But technology was used in fragmented manner.
He further added that it was in silos which was not scalable. He opined that digital elements need to be connected for applications to run smoothly. Digital records in the form of registers of Hospitals,Clinics,laboratories,etc. were developed. He also highlighted that Central Government is developing a Health Exchange Platform for Hospital authorities and insurance companies to interact directly for disbursing insurance claims of a patient faster. He also added that NHA is working on developing a Unified Health Interface(UHI) which will be an open network designed to enable interoperable digital health service delivery. Unlike big hospitals, smaller hospitals, clinics are not able to afford digital systems as they are expensive.
“To enable them to use technology, Central Government has developed Health Management Information System(HMIS) where the Government is in talks with Technology providers to enable the smaller players to store their data in the cloud at a reasonable price, he added. He urged the partners of the Ecosystem to come forward and contribute towards this initiative,” he added.
Dr Vinod Paul, Member, Niti Aayog while delivering his Inaugural Address, urged the people of the country to connect with technology faster. Central Government has developed many platforms for the ease of public and therefore it is high time for people to get connected with technology faster and start using these platforms. He also highlighted the need for leveraging technology for early childhood development (For Children in the age group of 0 – 6). He also added that the next frontier for technology intervention is the area of Home Care for patients. Technology outreach coupled with Physical Outreach is the way forward for hospitals, he added. He also shared his concern that Public Sector Hospitals and Government Medical Colleges are lagging behind in digitization. He highlighted the need for their digitization. He ended his address by adding that the education sector needs to be given a digital push.
