How med-tech start-ups are leading the way towards a more robust healthcare infrastructure in India

The recent pandemic has exposed a whole lot of shortcomings in the healthcare system here in India. I believe the most important lesson that the pandemic has taught us is that healthcare delivery needs to be decentralized. This push towards the periphery will ensure that healthcare is available where it is needed most, when it is needed most. While there are several aspects of healthcare, for the purpose of this article, I will only dwell on diagnostics and the opportunities for med-tech start-ups therein.

More than two-thirds of clinical decisions are based on diagnostic test results. Thus, diagnostics is a central pillar of healthcare. Decentralization for diagnostics means setting up quality diagnostic centers in every nook and corner, catering to smaller clusters of local populations. While automated machinery for diagnostics has seen tremendous advancements in the last few decades, most existing solutions are geared towards the traditional clinical laboratory settings – which have high footfalls and thus require high throughput. They are not suitable for scenarios with medium to low footfalls, which is exactly the case we need to solve for in the decentralization push.

The solution to this problem is the coming-of-age of point of care diagnostic tools which provide quality diagnostic output and can thus be used as good screening solutions. Apart from the diagnostic accuracy, these solutions must also be cost effective. They should be connected, so that remote monitoring and remote review of test results is seamless. The ongoing deployment of 5G technology should definitely provide a boost to connectivity. Finally, they should leverage the power of AI to help the medical professionals who review the test results, to reduce the burden on them.

While point of care solutions for quality diagnostics are available today, most of them are built for the needs of developed economies. To be effective in the cost sensitive market of emerging economies, these solutions must necessarily be designed and developed locally. This is where I believe lies the biggest opportunity for med-tech start-ups, all over the world: build for quality while addressing the economic needs of the local market.

Today, most diagnostic equipment used in India is imported. But that scenario is likely to change in the near future. We have a plethora of med-tech start-ups, which address specific areas in the diagnostic world.

So, how does this help? The cost-effective nature of these solutions ensure that they can be deployed in places where it is not economically viable to have larger high throughput diagnostic systems. Most of these solutions are IoT, and thus allow remote review of test results. Pathologists and clinicians located far from the site of testing can now monitor the health of remote populations. But that also increases the workload of the reviewers, who are anyway over-burdened with their existing caseloads. This is where AI comes in. AI can help screen the normal samples and direct the attention of the reviewers to specific abnormalities. This increases the efficiency of the reviewer, and ultimately leads to better clinical outcomes for the patient.

I believe India is on the right track to build home grown solutions for healthcare addressing the needs of local populations. It just needs the right support in terms of policy, adoption and investment.

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