Advancement of technology to tackle clinical limitations in healthcare

The size of healthcare market in India is expected to reach US$ 372 billion by 2022, driven by rising income, better health awareness, lifestyle diseases and increasing access to insurance. The Indian medical tourism market was valued at US$ 2.89 billion in 2020 and is expected to grow multi-fold to US$ 13.42 billion by 2026.

At the recently concluded Radiological Society of North America (RSNA), one of the largest events in Radiology, leading health-tech companies highlighted their latest diagnostic and pathway informatics portfolio featuring end-to-end solutions to enable earlier and more definitive diagnosis. The event also served as an ideal platform for discussions on the trends that are being observed in the industry.

Some of the key trends that hold relevance for India include:

Emergence of Advanced Technology to break the current clinical limitations: The continued rapid advancement of medical equipment has enabled healthcare providers to deliver accurate diagnosis with better patient results. While these technologies might be expensive initially, the technology can be used at a high-volume center to deliver better clinical outcomes at a lower cost, which is ideal in a country like India. A great example of this is dual-detector Spectral CT Technology, which uses only single X-ray source and yet delivers spectral imaging 100% of the time. This technology avoids exposing double the amount of x-ray on patient and need for repeated scan (and hence cost effective).

Data is the Future of Healthcare: The significance of Artificial Intelligence in healthcare has continued to gain momentum as it plays important part in swiftly processing computed data of patients for quicker and accurate analysis. In the future, AI will also assist in maximizing efficiencies and potential to improve work with patients. With the variety of patient data in India in a resource constraint environment, AI will be crucial in providing new protocols and faster clinical outcomes.

Fusion of technologies to deliver better patient care: The technology companies are collaborating and working to integrate various technologies to get better clinical insights to clinicians to deliver superior patient care. For example, Cardiac Ultrasound images can be fused with interventional Cath-lab live images for the cardiologist to make clinical decisions with precision especially in a complex clinical procedure. Healthcare companies today are focusing on delivering smart solutions either using their existing products through bundled or integrated approaches along with latest technologies like augmented reality, robotics etc. in healthcare to deliver superior clinical outcomes.

Remote healthcare and telemedicine: Tele-medicine, Tele-diagnosis, Tele-monitoring etc. became the norm during the pandemic and these new ways of providing access to care with efficiency continue to stay evolve even more in the times to come. Longitudinal data collected and analyzed effectively from individuals, will transform lives of people (even before they become patients) and will eventually be an important part of any clinical intervention.

In summary, India’s healthcare sector offers a unique opportunity of scale & data to impact lives of millions in a positive manner. Technology will enable comparable healthcare outcomes with the rest of the world, at a fraction of cost that the rest of world pays for.