Top 3 Factors Boosting The Indian Healthcare Sector

The Indian Healthcare Industry has been doing pretty well over the past few years. Even prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, areas such as medical devices, medical equipment, health insurance and even medical tourism among others were projected to gro year on year. 

The presence of many unhealthy lifestyle diseases among society, technologies such as tele-medicine and boosted investment in the healthcare space, were the contributing factors towards this, that still play a role in advancing the sector.

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With the corona virus spreading rapidly, the opportunities have risen. Even more advanced technology will now elevate the existing healthcare system while home-based remote health gadgets and services are set to change the sector profile. The local healthcare sector is projected to reach USD 135 billion by 2022.

Here are the top 3 factors that will lead to rapid advancement in Indian healthcare in the coming years:

1) Well Invested and Affordable

All positive factors boosting the Indian Healthcare industry begin with an increase in government expenditure. In the Union Budget of 2020-21, the government announced an encouraging allocation of USD 9.87 billion towards the health sector while ensuring to increase healthcare spending to 3% of the GDP by 2022. 

Added to this, many Indian hospitals and diagnostic centres have been steadily attracting Foreign Direct Investment in the past few years. The result is a fertile medical space filled with opportunities for a variety of players, in urban and rural areas.

Such conducive conditions have boosted competition and raised industry standards considerably. Medical tourism has been and will continue to be a leading segment owing to advanced techniques and well trained medical professionals available in India. Plus, R&D related initiatives along with Abbreviated New Drug Application approvals give India a distinct advantage over many other countries, acting as an outstanding driving factor.

The National Digital Health Blueprint 2020 released by the Government of India that offers a well detailed and integrated Digital Health Ecosystem is currently poised to launch. This document integrates various efforts made by players in the medical industry, pertaining to digital health and are designed to achieve the goals defined by the National Health Policy and Sustainable Development.

2) Mobile Health

Mobile Health or MHealth is a part of the remote healthcare service sector that caters to people in the comfort of their homes. It includes tools that can accurately diagnose, track health, and educate health workers and people in general.

MHealth is especially relevant to these times and numerous companies have already jumped on the MHealth bandwagon, including Consumer Tech and Pharma companies. It assists many companies and medical practitioners to be reached by far off consumers that reside away from quality hospitals and medical facilities.

Technology fuels the MHealth industry with IoT backed devices, Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) and Disease Management apps for patients with long term conditions such as diabetes, high cholesterol, obesity and more.

3) Focus on Wellness

The entire theme based triggered by the pandemic revolves around boosting immunity. This has resulted in an expansion of the healthcare sector into areas of holistic wellness. The lockdown has caused stress levels to rise and in turn affect people’s health.

This has brought all areas of wellness into focus including emotional, occupational, environmental and social wellness. Companies catering to issues such as post traumatic stress disorder, insomnia, anxiety and related psychological problems have begun creating apps, networks and modalities to reach out to a wider number of people.

We can also expect to witness a rise in fitness experts, nutritionists and alternative therapy practitioners such as yoga and meditation therapists, making the wellness sector a formidable contributor to the Indian Healthcare Industry. 

Hence, these are three primary areas of improvement and growth expected from our healthcare sector. They widen the scope of healthcare and allow multiple players with unique specializations to operate within a booming and vital sector, fore-casted to create ripples, globally.