Dr. Shiban Ganju Archives - InnoHEALTH magazine

Challenges and redefining healthcare landscape

InnoHEALTH Magazine — Tue, 27 Feb 2018 10:27:29 +0000

Challenges and Redefining Healthcare Landscape

Keynote Address: R. Rengarajan Iyengar
Moderator: Sachin Gaur
Panelists:
• Anjali Kaushik
• Dr. Sanjay Sharma
• Dr. Nimmi Rastogi
• Amit Bhatnagar
• Deepak Mittal

As India evolves from four-cosmo cities to a vast population coming under the modern cities the healthcare landscape evolves tremendously – discuss high profile panelists at the last session of the InnoHEALTH 2017

Opening the discussion, R. Rengarajan Iyengar of HCL Healthcare started very strongly saying, “The need of the hour is to get the authority of the public sector married with the energy and efficiency of the private sector. With changes in the demographics of the country, health care sector is growing into a very profitable sector as more and more cities are emerging as modern cities and expect only the very best in health and medical facilities.”

In support of his belief, he emphasized, “To achieve the above goals, we need to turn to innovative approach of things that may include new technology, newer processes and modern approach to processing and delivery of the best of the facilities. Concepts like telemedicine and cloud computing are also encouraging new players to enter as investors and at the same time luring corporates to invest in this sector.”

[vc_single_image image=”3410″ img_size=”500×300″ alignment=”center” onclick=”link_image”]

[vc_single_image image=”3412″ img_size=”500×300″ alignment=”center” onclick=”link_image”]

Sachin Gaur, took over as the moderator of the session and brought in his international exposure sharing his experience in the Scandinavian countries and opened the discussion with his view: “New Age requires New Solutions.”

Starting with Dr. Anjali Kaushik, he engaged the panelists with their thoughts on the subject.

“When you are handling large data sets, and that too, sensitive data like the details of patients, their illness; their personal details and their current medical status – there’s always a threat of cyber attack and we have recently seen in the case of UK’s NHS site being hacked and data was compromised. India is no exception to this as many hospitals have been subject to hacking leading to a freeze in the system where doctors could not treat patients without any access to their vital information. For this we have to induce digital hygiene and put systems in place to ensure that our dependency on digital platform doesn’t become a liability to the system,” said Dr Anjali Kaushik.

In contrast to the skeptical approach of Dr. Anjali, Sachin added that, “Hacking of data remains a grave concern for depending on that tool, but that’s only one aspect of it. There are, however, larger benefits of this holistic approach of using digitization with innovative tools. The way forward is for different players to gather their efforts and handle the challenge of collating quality and accurate data with a unified effort,” said Sachin.

“This is what I have witnessed during my trips abroad, especially in the Scandinavian countries where even the government contributes to gather data and process it suitably,” he concluded.

Dr. Sanjay Sharma, from Yostra labs and Vital Sense added, “We have made an effort to innovate in the field of scarcity and help in extending trained hands to help patients recover fast. There are always well-wishers with patients in the hospital, and they are close relatives of the patient who, we realized, can be utilized to help the patients recover fast and contribute to extending health care beyond doctors and medical staff. So, we initiated an innovative approach to train these well-wishers who contribute with total honesty and good intent to learn healthcare basics. The results have been amazing and have in fact contributed to relieving nurses who are over-worked and short staffed.”

Close to Delhi, the latest break through in the healthcare sector is Mohalla Clinics and Dr. Nimmi Rastogi, shared her thoughts on the concept as Health Advisor to the Government of Delhi. “Mohalla Clinic is a nofrills attached basic clinic to provide primary health services to people in the neighborhood. The facility has one doctor and four medical staff including a nurse and a compounder. It’s a prefabricated, air-conditioned facility in less than 100 sq yards with two rooms and basic facilities to store medicines and conduct essential tests.”

Elaborating on the facility, Dr Nimmi added, “The facility extends free facilities – free consultation, free medicines and 110 tests are conducted free of cost for anyone, irrespective if they belong to Delhi or not. Within the first year of its operations we are handling 80-100 patients a day using innovative tools and digital platform.”

Adding human element to innovations, Amit Bhatnagar of Accuster Technologies shared his personal and professional opinion on the subject and said, “When you talk of innovations, it must involve the people and not just development of technology. With such a large number of technically qualified manpower available to us, innovations without involving them are missing the bigger picture. Our journey of innovation is based on the fact that more than 85 crore people do not have access to diagnostic facilities as they live in rural areas. Our objective has been to develop technology that can be rugged enough to reach out to these rural grounds and help provide accurate diagnostics leading to better remedies.”

[vc_single_image image=”3413″ img_size=”500×300″ alignment=”center” onclick=”link_image”]

Deepak Mittal, concluded the session spelling out the mission of his company that has gone beyond technology and has extended healthcare by clever use of data in relation to the demographics.

“The mission of our company is to prevent and control diseases, improve quality of care and reduce cost of care. With the help of algorithms and artificial intelligence we can map the trends and predict unexpected ailment attacks with respect to the demographics of the region and population,” explained Deepak.

“For this our dependence on data is crucial and I must share that data in the healthcare sector is probably the worst data with no unified parameters on any filter. So the biggest challenge in executing our intentions with honesty and accuracy totally depends on acquiring and collating good quality data,” concluded Deepak.

[vc_cta h2=”Dr. Tarun Ramole”]

“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 business, 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.”

[/vc_cta]

[vc_cta h2=”Dr Ronald Heslegrave”]

“It’s a huge problem and its problem that’s been prevalent for as long as the Clinical Trials themselves. But we often ask ourselves, ‘Do we know how big the problem is?’ And in all fairness, we didn’t know how big the problem is. Research Integrity can be questioned if the Clinical Trials have been unfair in the process and there have been papers that have been withdrawn by Canadian authorities that have been involving questionable practices – especially involving clinical trials.”

[/vc_cta]

[vc_cta h2=”Dr Shiban Ganju”]

“We have learnt until now that human body is an amalgamation of cells, tissues and cells. Now, the human body has emerged as a conglomeration of biochemical process that are scattered around and work in close coordination with each other with the sole purpose of keeping the human body alive. Another baffling reality for me is the Ayurveda that introduces us to the benefits of plants and their properties. After all, trees and plants appeared much before the pharma industry. Plants have been in existence for more than two billion years and our pharma is less than 200 years old.”

[/vc_cta]

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

Connect with InnovatioCuris on:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/innovatiocuris
Twitter: https://twitter.com/innovatiocuris
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/7043791
Stay updated about IC, visit: www.innovatiocuris.com

The post Challenges and redefining healthcare landscape appeared first on InnoHEALTH magazine.

Understanding the chemistry of good health

InnoHEALTH Magazine — Thu, 22 Feb 2018 05:01:12 +0000

Today’s pharma industry has gone beyond molecular structures and rolling out tablets. Since the first Pharma Policy by the Indian government in 1986, the industry has come a long way and today every third pill consumed in the world is from India.

Keynote Address: Dr. Ronald Heslegrave
Moderator: Dr. Shiban Ganju
Panelists:
• Dr. V.K, Sharma
• Dr. Vinod Nikhra
• Dr. Anjana Batni
• Ashish Kumar

It all started with a chemical reaction and hence it’s very obvious that it can only be controlled with a series of chemical reactions. And, so came the pharma industry more than 200 years ago.

That’s history, today the pharma industry, especially in India is very modern in its approach and is shouldering the health sector with its innovative approach and modern innovations. But growing back to the future, India is also taking lead to promote its age-old Ayurveda that is as effective as any other modern science.Opening the floor to this high voltage discussion, Dr. Shiban Ganju Atrimed Pharmaceuticals in the US said, “Until now human body has been an amalgamation of cells, tissues and organs. Now, the human body has emerged as a conglomeration of biochemical process that are scattered around and work in close coordination with each other with the sole purpose of keeping the human body alive.

[vc_single_image image=”3373″ img_size=”500×300″ alignment=”center” onclick=”link_image”]

[vc_single_image image=”3374″ img_size=”500×300″ alignment=”center” onclick=”link_image”]

“Another baffling reality for me is that Ayurveda introduces us to the benefits of plants and their properties. After all, trees and plants appeared much before the pharma industry. Plants have been in existence for more than two billion years and our pharma industry is less than 200 years old. Not only that, plants have a self-preserving system and can fight any bacterial attack or any foreign infection; that makes them the most natural source for our pharma industry – even in these modern times. More so in the modern times!” he concluded his thoughts with his faith in age-old Ayurveda.

Closer to the ground, Dr. V.K. Sharma shared some startling facts about the Indian pharma sector: “We are the most economical medicine manufacturer in the world. India is the third largest producer in volume and 10th largest in business globally. Thirty percent of US requirements are catered by Indian pharma manufacturers. We export to almost 200 countries in the world. One out of every three pills consumed in the world is from India. And all this has been achieved in the last 30 years when the Indian government came out with its Pharma policy in 1986.”

“Despite that India pharma industry has been facing many challenges and to address those issues now there’s a new Drug & Pharma policy that will encourage more research and development in the country making the pharma industry more robust and bigger than ever.”

Dr. Vinod Nikhra highlighted the contribution of Indian pharma industry beyond the “pill factor” as he emphasized the broad developments in the sector and what makes it click internationally.

“India has been on the forefront of providing some of the leading medical facilities that are uniquely innovative and ingenious. Indian pharma industry has gone beyond molecular contributions and is in fact manufacturing some ground breaking gadgets and machines that contribute to curing people from extreme ailments like heart and lung diseases, transplants and coronary diseases,” he said.

On the flip side, he added, “Of course pricing is an issue that is faced by the industry and the irony is that despite the price being much cheaper than the international market, it still remains out of reach of most Indians. For this we are counting on government to extend some encouraging and bold steps to make medical facilities and good health within the reach of all.”

Highlighting the problems of the Indian Pharma industry, Ashish Kumar from Medicea Technology Solutions said that, “The problem that we are trying to solve is two-fold. First one is facing the encroachment of fake and counterfeit drugs which is growing at 25% CAGR per year and is valued at $10 billion annually. We are working closely with IBM to address this problem and are on the brink of perfecting a fool-proof system that will block every fake or counterfeit drug in the country.”

[vc_single_image image=”3375″ img_size=”500×300″ alignment=”center” onclick=”link_image”]

“Second project that we are working on is to track and design demographics of drug consumption. Use of a particular drug in a zone or a larger region can give a very useful insight to health authorities as to what is the cause of those ailments that are leading to high consumption of particular drugs in that particular area.”

Dr. Anjana Batni, an Ayurveda researcher from Atrimed Biotech brought glory to Indian past highlighting the relevance and importance of age-old Ayurveda that is getting increasingly accepted universally and is completing the modern medicine and not competing with it.

Highlighting the contributions of her organization, she said, “With the intention to modernize Ayurveda, we are collating data about the plants and their use. Ayurveda texts identify how to diagnose, manage and how to cure diseases; and they also have vast information on plant molecules and so far, less than 10 percent of these plant molecules identified in Ayurveda texts are in practice. Our efforts are to classify all the plant molecules and store them digitally for use by Ayurveda practitioners and other medical platforms. As of now we have a library of 2.8 lakh plant molecules identified and digitally stored at our facility.”

“We are soon embarking on clinical trials of our discoveries and we hope that our efforts can bridge the gap between modern pharma and Ayurveda with our discoveries,” concluded Dr Batni to a welcome applause from the audience.

[vc_cta h2=”Maj Gen Jagtar Singh”]

“Outbreaks are a huge threat in the army as we have a large body of human beings living together. For this we have a large army of efficient doctors and medical staff to contain such outbreaks. The second challenge is harsh ground realities as our soldiers work in extreme conditions. To treat them at these extreme conditions, the Indian army has done some specific researches that have been accepted all over the world and not just with our soldiers.”

[/vc_cta]

[vc_cta h2=”Dr Rishikesha T. Krishnan”]

“Innovations in health care 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 other who will complement your product, effort and your intentions. There’s no one entity that has all the knowledge and resources to develop any product in entirety.”

[/vc_cta]

[vc_cta h2=”Dr S. Venkataramanaiah”]

“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, health care has some major deficiencies like availability of medical help at anytime and anywhere. Like you have road-side assistance available all over the country, such a facility for health and medical urgencies is still not available.”

[/vc_cta]

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

The post Understanding the chemistry of good health appeared first on InnoHEALTH magazine.

UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE: INNOVATIONS NEEDED IN REGULATIONS

InnoHEALTH Magazine — Mon, 10 Apr 2017 06:58:46 +0000

[vc_single_image image=”1050″ qode_css_animation=””]

Universal Healthcare: Innovations Needed in Regulations
Dr. Sanju Ganju is the founder chairman of Atrimed Pharmaceuticals, a company modernizing Ayurveda. He is the founder of ‘Save a Mother’, a healthcare NGO, which works in over 1200 villages. During his career, he has participated in over a hundred non-profit projects.In the past, he was the CEO of Reliance Health and Technology, executive director of America India Foundation, chairman of Action for India and adviser to Rajiv Gandhi Charitable Trust. He also served in the Indian army. He graduated from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Delhi and specializes in gastroenterology and hepatology.

[vc_empty_space]

In most other countries, the constitution requires the government to provide some form of healthcare. The implementation, however, suffers from deficit of policy, government or resources even in the countries that consider healthcare as a part of social justice. The Author talks about how India can lead with innovations in legislation, policy, governance and finance to provide health for all.

[vc_empty_space]

Adequate healthcare is both, a prerequisite and a consequence, of the growth of a country. A health system can deliver public health and medical services, if its solid foundation includes skilled workforce, information systems, medical products, technology, adequate financing and governance. While technology can provide innovative tools to improve health, it is the regulatory framework whichcan provide the enabling ecosystem. It is important that Innovations not be limited to drugs and devices but also include regulations.Ultimately,it is laws that determine financing and structure of healthcare.

The nations of the world have included healthcare in their legal framework in some form.Almost all countries are signatories to one or more international human rights or health rights declarations.

One third of the countries include healthcare as a constitutional right for individual citizens. Russiaand former countries of the Soviet bloc Italy, Spain, Brazil, Philippines and South Africa have maintained health as human right in their constitution. On the other end of the spectrum are countries like the USA, which have no individual constitutional right to healthcare.

In most other countries, the constitution requires the government to provide some form of healthcare. The implementation,however, suffers from deficit of policy, governance or resources even in the countries that consider healthcare as a part of social justice.

India extrapolates health rights from other parts of the constitution.The right to health in India is outlined the Directive Principles of State Policy- Articles 42 and 47 and the fundamental right to life as stated in article 21.

Article 42 states that the State shall make provision for securing just and humane conditions of work and for maternity relief.

Article 47 states that the State shall regard the raising of level of nutrition and the standard of living of its people and the improvement of public health as among its primary duties and, in particular, the State shall endeavor to bring about prohibition of the consumption, except for medicinal purposes, of intoxicating drinks and of drugs which are injurious to health.

Article 21,“The Fundamental Right to Life” guaranties individual life.

The Indian judiciary has interpreted the “Right to Life’ in many ways. It has held that humane working conditions, health services and medical care are an essential part of Article 21. Public interest litigation, as well as litigation arising out of claims made by individuals,has generated substantial case law showingright to health is an integral part of the Right to Life.

For technological innovations to flourish in its current stage of development, India needs more proactive regulations to progress towards universal healthcare.

Currently the Indian government spends about 1 percent of GDP on healthcare. Compare that to 3 percent in China and 8.3 percent in the USA. Private expenditure on healthcare is in addition to public expenditure; approximately 70% of health expenditure in India is from private sources.

A study done by PGI Chandigarh, suggests that universal health care services for entire 1.2 billion population, the annual cost of providing preventive and curative services will be INR 2415 billion (USD 54 billion). This would amount to increasing the allocation to health sector from current nearly 1% to 3.8% of GDP.

Indian business association, FICCI and consultants EY, estimated in 2012 that universal health cover would require government health spending to increase to 3.7-4.5 percent of GDP.

The current government, under the National Health Assurance Mission, would provide all citizens free drugs and diagnostic treatment and insurance cover to treat serious ailments. It would cost an estimated $11.4 billion annually.

In 2010, a High Level Expert Group on Universal Health Coverage recommended increasing public financing from 1% of the gross domestic product to at least 2.5% to provide essential health care package through tax funding and employer-provided insurance.

The Lancet published an India focused issue on health in Jan 2011. The lead authors (K SrinathReddy, Vikram Patel, Prabhat Jha, Vinod K Paul, A K Shiva Kumar, Lalit Dandona),summarized the recommendations of various working groups as ‘call to action’ as follows. They propose the following targets to be achieved by 2020 through the creation of the Integrated National Health System with three overarching goals: ensure the reach and quality of health services to all in India; reduce the ﬁnancial burden of health care on individuals; and empower people to take care of their health and hold the health-care system accountable.

Service delivery

• The entire population should be covered by an entitlement package of health care with

ﬁnancing from a combination of public, employer, and private sources. Full range of relevant diseases need to be included in the entitlement package of health services with cost-eﬀective interventions that include health promotion and disease prevention.

• All health practitioners and facilities in the public and private sectors have to be registered with the Integrated National Health System.

Health Financing

• Public spending on health should be increased from 1% to 6% of the gross domestic product, and 15% of tax revenues—including new taxes on tobacco products, alcohol, and food with little nutritional value—should be earmarked for this purpose.

• Reduce the proportion of out-of-pocket spending from 80% to 20% of the total health expenditure.

• Increase spending on health research to 8% of the health budget.

Human resources for health

• Establish the Indian Health Service with guidelines developed through an autonomous National Council for Human Resources in Health.

• An updated training curriculum should be fully in place for medical and allied professions that is relevant to the situation in India.

• Establish suitable incentive structures to retain health providers in underserved areas.

Health information system

• Have in place comprehensive health information and surveillance system that covers all major diseases, health-system issues, and key social determinants, which also facilitates assessment of public health interventions.

• Establish adequate research capacity in India to investigate and report key issues that aﬀect the health system and policy for further improvements.

• Have in place a fully functional autonomous council that compiles and synthesizes relevant information to develop guidelines for evidence-based health care and its assessment.

Drugs and technology

• Implement a national network of pharmacies for generic low-cost drugs for the entire population.

• Establish mechanisms for bulk purchase of patented drugs at low cost.

• Have in place mechanisms to check and control the use of perverse incentives by pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies for health-care providers.

Governance

• Have in place mechanisms to make functional the components of the National Health Bill.

• Have a system in place that requires all middle and senior functionaries in public health to have relevant training in public health.

• Ensure devolution of responsibility for health care to district management systems along with accountability mechanisms and explicit community participation (The Lancet, Jan 2011).

India, at current stage of development needs more healthcare in every form and not less. Multiple studies have confirmed the fiscal feasibility and for technological innovations to flourish we needs a progressive enabling ecosystem.

Opposition to right to health emphasizes that it could increase the fiscal deficit;it could create shortage and increase the wait time for medical services, which would lead to rationing and lower the quality. It could also cause people to overuse health care resources. While appreciating valid opposing view, human development is not possible without guaranteed healthcare. Financial burden of a single episode of disease pushes millions of Indians into poverty, which stifles the market for technological progress.

Health and longevity have improved as never before in human history. And with explosive growth in the knowledge of human biology and genetics, it is likely that the life span will increase exponentially. It may even change the very definition of health to include happiness, intelligence and aesthetics as components of a new paradigm. It is imperative that innovations in legislation, policy, governance and finance will have to stay ahead of the burgeoning technologic innovations and not fall behind to irrelevance. It is important to have innovative strategic thinkers in the leadership positions that understand biology, healthcare, governance and finance.

[vc_empty_space]

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

[vc_separator type=”normal”]

Connect with InnovatioCuris on:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/InnovatioCuris
Twitter: https://twitter.com/innovatiocuris
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/7043791
Stay update about IC by visiting: www.innovatiocuris.com

Connect with InnoHEALTH 2017 on:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/innohealth2017
Twitter: https://twitter.com/innhealth2017
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/7043791
Stay update about the conference by visiting: www.innohealth.in

The post UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE: INNOVATIONS NEEDED IN REGULATIONS appeared first on InnoHEALTH magazine.