Maj Gen Jagtar Singh Archives - 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.

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“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.”

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“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.”

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[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.”

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[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.”

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Read all the issues of InnoHEALTH magazine:
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InnoHEALTH Volume 2 Issue 1 (January to March 2017) – https://goo.gl/DEyKnw
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The post Understanding the chemistry of good health appeared first on InnoHEALTH magazine.

Health should start with public

InnoHEALTH Magazine — Mon, 19 Feb 2018 06:41:37 +0000

Initiating the discussion on the subject of Public Health and Biotechnology, Dr. D. Prabhakaran emphasized the need to start with working with collated data, for the purpose, from the location and find solutions that are unique to that area.

Keynote Address: Dr. D Prabhakaran
Moderator: Dr. V.K Singh
Panelists:
• Dr. Jaanus Pikani
• Dr. Pranav Gupta
• Dr. Sanjiv Kumar
• Maj Gen Jagtar Singh

Citing the example of global data about Diabetes, Dr. Prabhakaran brought to the notice of the audience that what is relevant to a specific area may not be applicable elsewhere, hence not very usable for health service providers in that region.

This is very important and relevant as biotechnology can be best put to use with good quality data for a specific region and disease. “We need to understand the mechanism of the 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,” said Dr. Prabhakaran.

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He concluded his thoughts on the problems with suggestions that what is required is a simple device available at the location and operational without the need of any complex operations. We need to develop such devices for monitoring of communicable devices that can be used for self monitoring, patient management in hospitals and screening.

In contrast to the scenario above, Maj Gen Jagtar Singh, an expert in the field of medicine with our armed forces sketched a very different scenario and raised very relevant points.

“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”, he explained.

He continued his thoughts on the same and said, “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 research that has been accepted all over the world and not just with our soldiers.

“In the field of acclimatization, we are working with innovative approaches to cut down the acclimatization period and counting on such platforms as this to understand our unique problems and extend their service to find acceptable solutions,” concluded Maj Gen Jagtar Singh.

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Dr. Jaanus Pikani has been an active member of the team that orchestrated transition of the Estonian health care from the Soviet type system to the most cost-efficient health care system globally recognized by the World Bank. Dr. Pikani was among the initiators and architects of the Estonian Genome Project, a globally unique population based health and genome databank of 50,000 participants or 5% of Estonian population, as of now.

Highlighting this as a new yardstick of providing public health, he shared that the Genome Project is now supported by various European states and in fact has reached as far as Vietnam and around. European countries and the World Bank have been in support of the project and eagerly back the project with good intentions.

Dr. Pikani feels that what they have achieved may be small in number especially when compared to India, but the same can be replicated with faith and dependence on technology and innovations.

Highlighting the efforts and intentions of the Government of India, Dr. Sanjiv Kumar, Director of the International Institute of Healthcare Management (IIHMR) shared his excitement regarding the positive steps of the government. “I am excited about the shape of things to come in the near future with acceptance and adaptation of innovations and new technology.”

In fact, he took a very encouraging approach and said, “Technology is available in your pocket for your good health. Starting with your smartphone, 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 lives and us our using technology of today with the very innovative approach and amazing outcomes.”

“Even the shortage of doctors or specialists is taken care of by telemedicine or long distance consultation. This is not in the future, but is, in fact, happening with the best of the doctors and specialists being consulted by clinics and medical facilities from all over the country – some as newly-formed private establishments or many more backed by the government to maximize the utilization of doctors and specialists who are in terrible shortage.”

All the panelists unanimously voiced their positivity about the fact that the health and medical field in India has been most encouraging in embracing innovations and new technology with amazing results.

[vc_cta h2=”Dr Karthik Anantharaman”]

“Traditionally developing medical devices is very capital intensive with years of R&D that adds to the cost and makes it very unviable for the product to be of any commercial viability. The best way forward is to produce products that are of need by the doctors and not indulge in ambitious research programs that can take as long as 4-5 years of development time and just the rearch can cost a couple of million of dollars.”

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[vc_cta h2=”Stephen Victor”]

“Life cycle of a diagnostic device is not predictable as some competition may arrive in the market within six months of its launch, with additional facilities, extra benefits and probably at a cheaper cost. And there are other factors that can contribute to failure of the product despite it being very innovative and technically superior. For this you need Curators for startups or need big corporate to invest in service and maintenance for new innovative products.”

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[vc_cta h2=”M.V. Amaresh Kumar”]

“Cost of innovation is always high as it involves immense research and investment in resources with no guarantee of market share. Government establishments like the Andhra Metric Zone and Abdul Kalam institute have come to the rescue of such innovators who need hand-holding by someone for making new products commercially viable and relieving the inventor of such mental burden. Only such marriage between innovators and non-profit establishments can ensure innovations to be introduced at reasonable price – not necessarily at a cheap rate, but affordable.”

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