To determine the gaps in the Indian healthcare services that can be addressed by digitalising healthcare services and to investigate the factors that can improve the same

Abstract

The recent pandemic of COVID 19 has stressed on the importance of the health care systems like never before. Pandemic highlighted the gaps in the healthcare system especially in lower to middle income countries. Before the pandemic, almost 1/3rd of the population of this lower to middle income countries (LMIC) were living more than 2 hours away from the healthcare facilities. Similarly, the ratio of the healthcare workers to people was also significantly lower as compared to the WHO recommendations. The pandemic made the scenario even worse with increase in number of patients and no change in the level of facilities and its technological sophistication. Moreover, the deaths of healthcare during this period added oil to fire. Besides, the lack of unadaptable and unagile supply chain to transport facility from the one place to another was also worth noticing. A silver lining of the entire pandemic is the adoption of digital tools. These tools have a vast potential to improve responses to COVID like infectious diseases and bolstering healthcare system. This improvement is not easy to achieve. However, country-led partnership and largescale initiatives with an effort to make use of well-known and adaptable technologies. If these factors are implemented properly, the low to middle income countries can reinforce and widen the usage of digital tools across many primary healthcare cases. Now, India being a developing nation, forms a part of LMIC. Suggestions for these countries is suggestion to India too. The graph (Exhibit 1) shows the estimated number of private and public hospitals by the end of 2019. India being a home to close to 1.4 billion people and the number of hospitals stands 69264. This is extremely low. Also, considering the segregation among public and private hospitals, private hospitals accounts to roughly 63% of those. According to report by netscribes, the revenue by private hospital sector in India stands at INR 9995.06 Bn in FY 2021. And it is expected to rise to INR 25429.49 Bn by FY2027. This sector is growing with CAGR 20.53% during FY 21-27. Healthcare Industry is a huge industry. It encompasses many things. The tree diagram given below represent the same. The hospitals in the healthcare industry constitutes the major proportion. In that, the private hospital sector includes mid to top-tier hospitals and nursing homes that are specialized in giving secondary, tertiary and quaternary care.