Affordable healthcare Archives - InnoHEALTH magazine

Breaking Barriers in Healthcare Innovation: The Path to Impactful Change

Khushi Khandelwal — Fri, 14 Feb 2025 10:30:00 +0000

At InnoHEALTH Conference 2024, we had the privilege of speaking with Dr. Shirshendu Mukherji, an esteemed microbiologist and medical microbiologist with over 30 years of experience in healthcare innovation. His work has been instrumental in supporting innovative and affordable solutions in India and beyond. Dr. Mukherji has also played a crucial role in leading initiatives like Grand Challenges India and Mission COVID Suraksha, both of which have aimed to develop impactful healthcare solutions for pressing global health challenges.

The Power of Innovation in Healthcare

Reflecting on his session at the conference, Dr. Mukherji shared insights on the importance of impactful healthcare innovations. He paid tribute to Rear Admiral surgeon Dr. V.K. Singh, a mentor and a pioneer in fostering innovation within the medical community. Singh’s contributions extended beyond his service in the armed forces—he guided young innovators on grant writing and identifying unmet healthcare needs, helping them transform ideas into practical solutions.

Dr. Mukherji emphasized that true innovation must reach the common man—it should be affordable, accessible, and of high quality. He pointed out that while research and discoveries often happen in laboratories, their true value lies in real-world application. Innovation should not just exist in research papers or on shelves; it needs to be implemented in a way that impacts lives at scale.

Overcoming Challenges in Healthcare Innovation

When asked about the challenges in healthcare innovation, Dr. Mukherji acknowledged that obstacles are inevitable. He quoted Swami Vivekananda, saying, “The day you do not come across a problem or obstacle, take it for granted you are trotting on the wrong path.”

He stressed that innovation in healthcare is not a solo endeavor—it requires a collaborative, multidisciplinary approach. A successful innovation team should include:

Scientists to develop the idea
Clinicians to validate its practicality
Regulatory experts to ensure compliance
Intellectual property professionals to handle patents
Business strategists to plan production and market entry
Funding agencies to provide financial support

Each of these roles plays a critical part in bringing innovation from concept to reality. Without a well-rounded team, even the best scientific ideas might not reach the people who need them most.

The Evolution of Healthcare Innovation in India

Dr. Mukherji noted that in the last decade, India’s innovation ecosystem has grown tremendously. A significant factor behind this growth is the increased government support for healthcare innovation. Unlike before, today’s innovators no longer struggle with a lack of funding—there are multiple funding opportunities available for promising projects.

However, securing funding is not just about having a great idea. According to Dr. Mukherji, funding agencies look for:

Strong scientific foundation
A capable team
A clear exit strategy
A compelling story

He beautifully compared innovation to a fairy tale, stating that just like in stories that start with “Once upon a time” and end with “They lived happily ever after”, an innovation should have a clear beginning, a purpose-driven journey, and a meaningful impact on society.

Innovation for Underserved Communities

One of the most pressing concerns in healthcare is ensuring that innovations reach underserved communities. Dr. Mukherji advocates for a reverse approach to innovation—instead of starting with technology and finding its use, innovators should first identify a critical gap in the community and then work backward to find scientific and technological solutions.

By focusing on real-world needs first, healthcare innovations can have a greater, more meaningful impact, especially for populations that have limited access to quality healthcare.

Final Thoughts

Dr. Mukherji’s insights underscore the fact that healthcare innovation is more than just science—it’s about making a difference. With the right combination of vision, collaboration, and perseverance, it is possible to bridge the gap between research and real-world healthcare solutions.

As the healthcare landscape continues to evolve, the key takeaway from his discussion is that innovation should always serve a purpose—to improve lives, especially for those who need it most.

Composed by:

InnoHEALTH magazine digital team

Listen to the full podcast on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqxySMmh4-U

The post Breaking Barriers in Healthcare Innovation: The Path to Impactful Change appeared first on InnoHEALTH magazine.

Keeping hospitals in the best of health

InnoHEALTH Magazine — Wed, 21 Feb 2018 06:08:23 +0000

Hospitals will remain at the core of healthcare and with good quality medical facilities limited to corporate hospitals or a few of the government run large hospitals, altering the health map of the country has to start from the hospital premises.

Keynote Address: Dr. S. Venkataramanaiah
Moderator: Dr. Sandeep Bhalla
Panelists
• Dr. Santana Biswas
• Dr. Tarun Marole
• Dr. Mukesh Taneja
• M V Amaresh Kumar

Hospitals in India play a vital role in healthcare with most of the high-end medical facilities available only at the hospitals. But these large institutes are very far away from the masses as more than 70 percent of the Indian population lives in rural areas. That leads to a reality that medical facilities must go beyond hospitals, with an innovative approach, to serve the masses and make India a healthy place.

Addressing the issue as keynote speaker, Professor Krishnan from IIM, shed light on the management aspect of innovations and spelled out the needs of the industry for the sake of ensuring that all innovations become a reality and benefit the masses.

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In his words, he said, “Innovations in healthcare must consider three aspects: Begin with identifying core functionalities of equipment without having to sacrifice on the safety aspect. Secondly, start from scratch. Build upwards and incorporate all the technical features that you feel are essential to the product; downscaling features will not necessarily downscale your cost; lastly, collaborate and team up with others who will complement your product, effort and intentions. There’s no one entity that has all the knowledge and resources to develop any product in its entirety. So build up on sound partnerships using complementary technology and process.”

In support of the view, Dr. S. Venkataramanaiah highlighted data usage as one of the most effective tools to implement an innovative approach for spreading good health. He said, “Data clearly indicates that there’s a huge demand for private players in the health sector. Everyone is and needs to be medically insured and ensured of good health by private or a government body. On the other hand, healthcare has some major deficiencies like availability of medical help at anytime and anywhere. Like you have roadside assistance available all over the country, such a facility for health and medical urgencies is still not available.

“So innovative approach in production, processing, delivering service or business management is the answer to finding solutions to new challenges faced in the health sector,” he said

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In a more myopic approach to the topic of distance solutions Dr. Mukesh Taneja shared some startling data from the WHO.

“According to World Health Organization’s 2010 data 285 million people are visually impaired; 90 percent of these are in the developing world; and 80 percent of these are preventable,” he said.

And speaking of India, 70 percent of the population lives in rural areas, however 90 percent of the medical facilities are located in urban areas. So, there’s a huge gap between the care providers and the population who they should be reaching. And we believe that telemedicine – a very innovative approach — is the answer to bridge this gap. Eye problems can more effectively be pictured and online imaging of affected eye can easily be examined and diagnosed by a distant located ophthalmologist.
“We, at LV Prasad Eye Institute, extensively use this telemedicine platform and are reaching out to the rural population with the help of health workers and specially trained technicians who operate our remotely located Vision Centers.”

The next panelist, Dr. Santanu Biswas, from the UAE shared his international perspective and said, “If you are to work on remote distance technology, you cannot work in isolation. You choose partners in technology, data procurement and delivery system. This means your dependence on your partners is even more critical as you depend on their credibility, technical compatibility and similar intentions. This is the reason that even though we have been talking about digital health and e-health; but other than the fact that it’s been a buzzword for the last 15 years, it has not become a well-charted module. We are still talking about the concept and exploring innovations that will truly support the telemedicine or e-health platform. This is because we are trying to marry and merge a conventional health system with an imposed telemedicine process.”

Concluding his views on the subject he summed it up saying, “I think we need to rediscover a totally new innovative approach to telemedicine, which will use innovative technology, innovative approach and an all-new processing and delivery system. And this will evolve, as this is the future.”

Dr. Tarun Ramole, speaking in the role of an investor and entrepreneur spoke candidly about the business aspect of telemedicine. In his opinion, Telemedicine, as a business is a very lucrative platform. The gap between the resources and the users remains very high and in a country like India is not going to be easy to fill that.

“Telemedicine will be a very reliable option to bridge the gap and that makes it a very viable business option. But, like most businesses, telemedicine also has challenges that are very unique. Starting with, most start-ups end up replicating what is already there in the market “with improvisations”. What we need is new solutions and not improved solutions. You must think innovatively to innovate things,” he concluded his opinion with a very upfront approach on the subject.

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“We need to understand mechanism of disease. Innovations are needed in the management of acute illness. You also need data to apply biotechnology at its best and develop guidelines. Especially for contagious diseases, we need to keep track of various demographic realities on ground through good quality data that should be available to medical experts, without any corruption in the data. What is required is a simple device available at the location and operational without the need of any complex operations.”

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[vc_cta h2=”Dr Sanjiv Kumar”]

Technology is available in your pocket for your good heal. Starting with your smart phone, by which you can count the steps you take and the calories that you burn in a day, innovation hence has already become part of our life and we our using technology of today with very innovative approach and amazing outcomes.

“Even the shortage of doctors or specialists is taken care of by telemedicine or long distance consultation, he said”

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[vc_cta h2=”Dr Pranav Gupta”]

Cost is the most important element to determine easy diagnostics and cheap diagnostics. With that intent, we started our lab for local operations in Varanasi. With the advancement of biotechnology and implementation of biotechnology, we have developed some very affordable tools and devices to test and analyse clinical tests. Initially it was done locally in Varanasi with support from Banaras Hindu University, but our results also received encouraging support from doctors and specialists at All India Institute of Medical Medical Sciences in Delhi.”

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Want to write for InnoHEALTH? send us your article at magazine@innovatiocuris.com

Read all the issues of InnoHEALTH magazine:
InnoHEALTH Volume 1 Issue 1 (July to September 2016) – https://goo.gl/iWAwN2
InnoHEALTH Volume 1 Issue 2 (October to December 2016) – https://goo.gl/4GGMJz
InnoHEALTH Volume 2 Issue 1 (January to March 2017) – https://goo.gl/DEyKnw
InnoHEALTH Volume 2 Issue 2 (April to June 2017) – https://goo.gl/Nv3eev
InnoHEALTH Volume 2 Issue 3 (July to September 2017) – https://goo.gl/MCVjd6
InnoHEALTH Volume 2 Issue 4 (October to December 2017) – http://amzn.to/2B2UMLw
InnoHEALTH Volume 3 Issue 1 (January to March 2018) – https://goo.gl/fksdQx

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Innovative approach to a healthy life

InnoHEALTH Magazine — Fri, 09 Feb 2018 07:42:23 +0000

A two-day national level event InnoHEALTH 2017 was hosted in the capital with international participants. Vigyan Arya reports about the two-day high profile event attended by leading industry representatives from India and abroad.

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A voice to raise concern about the increasing cost of health and medical facilities was given a platform at the two-day InnoHEALTH 2017 that was hosted on September 18th and 19th in the capital. In the second year of its running, the event was co-hosted by InnovatioCuris and Indiattitude that extended a stage for innovations in the field of health and medicine.

Addressing the large gathering of doctors and high-profile professionals from the industry, Dr V.K. Singh, the visionary behind this event conveyed that the prime objective of this mega event is to contribute towards bringing down the healthcare delivery cost yet maintaining the quality.

InnoHEALTH 2017 helped in doing so by creating deliberations among policy makers, industry and academia on topics linked with Innovations in Hospitals, diagnostics, medical devices, pharma, biotech, digital healthcare and new delivery models.

The conference saw an attendance of around 250 Delegates with an overwhelming response of 170 on the very first day including 50 elite speakers from all over the world.

H.E. Riho Kruuv, Estonian Ambassador to India, DG Armed Forces Medical Services and Prof. Anil Gupta known for his work of innovations were some of the key speakers. The attendance saw presence from renowned healthcare personalities such as Dr. Arvind Lal of Lal Pathlabs, Dr. Ravi Gaur CEO Oncquest Labs, Dr. Padam Khanna – NHSRC, Mr. Partha Dey – IBM India, Mr. R Rengarajan Iyengar from HCL Healthcare.

On the first day of the power-packed two-day event, the conference hosted a B2B meeting to connect the Indian stakeholders with a visiting European Union delegation pertaining to innovative health sector companies. The companies were selected through a competitive program with a focus on cost-effective innovations for the Indian market.

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With the objective of making it an international platform for the industry professionals with similar aims and goals, the conference had very high-profile brands, corporate and government organizations shouldering their support. Conference also hosted young innovators award.

The big boost in the confidence and capabilities of the conference was extended by the Embassy of Estonia, as the country partner. Other leading partners included, NHSRC representatives of MoHFW, Government of India, Public Health Foundation of India; CAHO as the association of accredited hospitals of India and AHPI that represents more than 10,000 private healthcare providers. IAMI brought in the clinicians involved in healthcare analytics while ScanBalt brings the outreach to more than 22,000 professionals in 11 European countries.

There were many more that contributed feathers to the hat to make InnoHEALTH 2017 a very successful event in terms of the perceived outcome.

The two-day event saw some very insightful discussions on, Innovations for Hospitals; Diagnostics of Tomorrow; Innovations for Affordable Healthcare – A Medical Device Perspective and Public Health and Biotech, on the first day of the conference.

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The second day started off with a very informative keynote address by Professor Rishikesha T. Krishnan of IIM Indore. He is a Director and Professor of Strategic Management at the Indian Institute of Management in Indore.

It was followed by discussions on Healthcare Beyond Hospitals; Innovations in the Pharma Sector; Digital Health: Giving birth to new delivery models and fostering innovations, finally followed by Challenges and Redefining Healthcare Landscape.

The last two sessions of the day opened a very important chapter in the field of innovations in health sector. Indian and international companies were given a platform to make their pitch claiming the coveted Innovations titles. The finale was the dispensing of Young Innovations Awards.

Overwhelmed by the encouraging response this year, the organizers announced the dates for the next InnoHEALTH 2018, to take place on 5th – 6th October 2018, with a raised hope to come back next year keeping shared goals in healthcare with only, bigger, better and meatier roles for all stakeholders.

[vc_cta h2=””]His Excellency Riho Kruuv; Estonian Ambassador to India
I am very proud to be representative of Estonia as Country Partner for this conference on Innovations in Health Care because Estonia is a country that is all about innovations and fast adaptation of new technology. Estonia did not invent internet but we use it to the maximum especially in the health care society. In fact, in 26 years since independence, we have now become a digital society.“[/vc_cta][vc_cta h2=””]Dr V.K. Singh
Innovation is not very old. Despite that Public Health is the most curative neglected area as most doctors do not wish to go in that direction. Most prefer to work in the preventive medication that is more lucrative and appeals to most, even to the students, much before they even become qualified doctors.[/vc_cta]

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