- By Dr (Prof) Deepak Agrawal
Union Budget 2021-22 Expectations for Healthtech: With nations nevertheless fighting 1 of mankind’s greatest overall health crisis, gaps in the healthcare infrastructures in even some of the most created economies has raised alarms across the globe. India, which was struggling to meet the healthcare specifications due to lack of access to even standard healthcare facilities like ICUs, ventilators, and other vital health-related gear-even just before the pandemic, had to struggle to remain afloat by enforcing 1 of the most stringent lockdowns anyplace in the globe! The query is do we have to wait for a pandemic to hit us to make exceptional transformations in this field for far better delivery of healthcare and then align our sources/price range in this path?
On a positive note, this pandemic has been a wake-up get in touch with for the healthcare sector in India, exactly where the authorities came face to face with challenges plaguing the health-related technologies sector. The crucial answer to addressing this gap in accessibility and affordability of healthcare is producing homegrown technologies-driven innovations that facilitate production and delivery of health-related devices inside the nation, supplied the policymakers use this chance to align the sources/budgets to assure accessible, equitable, and good quality healthcare for the citizens of India. This lacuna requires to be addressed in the price range this year with a precise allocation of the price range for healthcare delivery, healthcare personnel, infrastructural developments, and a particular concentrate on innovations in healthcare by supporting startups in this field. It is evident that this pandemic has quick-tracked the need to have and adoption of technologies-driven options in healthcare and this trend is right here to remain. Healthcare providers have embraced technologies with virtual consultations, robot-assisted procedures, wearables (AI in health-related gear), and quite a few more innovations that help smooth delivery of healthcare.
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Last year the finance minister had allocated a paltry Rs 69,000 crore (1.29 per cent of GDP), inclusive of Rs 6,400 crore for Jan Arogya Yojana, to the healthcare price range. While this was more than what was allocated to overall health the year just before, it remains minuscule in a nation aspiring to be recognized as a created nation. The crucial answer is government-backed technologies-driven innovations that facilitate the production and delivery of heath-tech inside the nation. The pandemic has produced us realise the value of telemedicine, remote monitoring of NCDs, indigenous health-related gear, and the need to have for ‘surge capacity’ in healthcare. There is an expectation that the Finance Minister will lastly speak about the elephant in the area in this year’s price range with precise allocation for healthcare delivery and innovations with a lengthy-term vision for healthcare in India.
Some crucial considerations for this year’s price range need to be:
- Establishment of centrally funded hospital cum health-related college in every of the 739 districts of India. This has the prospective to radically transform the healthcare landscape of India and assure good quality price-successful healthcare to the citizens.
- Country-wide unified EMR (electronic health-related records) technique with illness registries and healthcare worker databases for optimised resource allocation. This requires a economic ‘Carrot & stick’ policy for nationwide implementation.
- Establishing and funding a National Healthcare Audit Authority (NHAA) which audits the functioning and good quality of care of all healthcare institutions in the nation employing objective KPI’s with minimum good quality requirements set for the care offered at every single step, primarily based on the healthcare facilities (main, secondary or tertiary).
- 5-year program in PPP funding model for establishing higher price imported health-related gear like MRI machine, CT scanner, Ultrasound machines, Ventilators, Dialysis machines, and so on., with a clear roadmap that inside 10 years all health-related gear need to be ‘made in India’ and every single essential healthtech need to be indigenised.
- Expand the PMJAY to incorporate all taxpayers. It is the minimum the government need to do, thinking of that the world’s biggest overall health scheme is funded by taxpayers’ income but excludes them.
Health is wealth. I sincerely hope that these thoughts are translated into actual policy choices for enhancing the overall health and wealth of India.
Dr (Prof) Deepak Agrawal is a Senior Professor at the Department of Neurosurgery, Neurosciences & Gamma Knife Centre, AIIMS, New Delhi. Views expressed are the author’s personal.