ASIA’S FIRST MONTHLY MAGAZINE ON THE ENTERPRISE OF HEALTHCARE

VOLUME 12 / ISSUE 01 / JANUARY 2017 / ` 75 / US $10 / ISSN 0973-8959

Newsmakers:
Measuring
the Pulse of 2016

Cover Story:

Immunotherapy:
Unravelling the
Magic Within
Dr SAJJAN
RAJPUROHIT
Medical Oncologist,
Rajiv Gandhi Cancer Institute &
Research Centre, New Delhi
 ASIA’S FIRST MONTHLY MAGAZINE ON THE ENTERPRISE OF HEALTHCARE

Volume 12 Issue 01 January 2017

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 Contents JANUARY 2017 | VOLUME - 12 | ISSUE - 01

12
Cover Story
Unravelling the
MAGIC WITHIN
Immunotherapy has emerged as a potent weapon in oncologists’
armoury to combat cancer. The idea relies heavily on tweaking
our immune system’s potency to fight cancerous cells.
- Dr Sajjan Rajpurohit
Medical Oncologist, Rajiv Gandhi Cancer
Institute & Research Centre, New Delhi

16
Newsmakers of 2016

Measuring
the Pulse of 2016
Exhibiting renewed confidence, the Indian healthcare sector is
poised to break growth barriers in 2017 given a favourable policy
environment and challenges that only seem to further strengthen
the industry’s resolve to enhance quality to become competitive
globally.

40
Outlook 2017
Big Plans on the
ANVIL
The year 2017 is set to herald a new growth phase in the Indian healthcare
sector. Riding on the back of innovation, disruptive approach and strategic
tie-ups to take on multitude of challenges, the health industry is expected to
remain on the growth trajectory.

6 JANUARY / 2017
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 Industry View Newsmakers of 2016

24 54 22 32

S Kalyanaraman Ramakanth Desai Dr Jitendar Kumar Sharma Dr Shankar Narang

General Manager-Key Accounts CEO Director & CEO COO
CURA Healthcare Pvt Ltd Curespring AMTZ Limited Paras Healthcare

60 62 38 44

Anil Gidwani Dr. Mandar Kulkarni Neha Rastogi Dr Sajan Nair

Director-Pharma Business CTO Co-founder Group COO
Dana Pharmaceuticals Pvt Ltd Cancer Genetics Inc. Agatsa Zydus Hospitals Pvt Ltd

46 52
Corporate Interview

26 28

Dr Nandakumar Jairam Dr Mayank Somani

GMD & Chairman CEO
Columbia Asia Hospitals Medics Super Speciality Hospital

Pallavi Jain Dr RK Mani 58

MD Group CEO Assessing
Krsnaa Diagnostics Nayati Healthcare & Research Climate
Change
30 34 Impact on
PUBLIC
HEALTH
Prof. Rakesh Kapoor
Director
SGPGIMS

Dr K Hari Prasad Ananth Thyagarajan

President Chief Executive Officer 56 Public Health
Apollo Hospitals Group Cittabase Solutions

8 JANUARY / 2017
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 JANUARY / 2017
ehealth.eletsonline.com 9
 Optimism Galore in
Health Industry
editorial
Heralding the New Year 2017, the Indian health industry looks poised
to continue its successful run. The early signs of an action-packed year
are already visible as Indian healthcare companies build on a solid
foundation laid during the last year. However, as the industry surges
ahead to explore new possibilities, it is crucial to take a look into the
bygone year with all its challenges and opportunities -- some of which
were realised while others missed.
Cancer has emerged as a major public healthcare challenge in India, with
14-15 lakh new cancer cases being reported each year in the country.
Today, innovative approaches to provide quality cancer care have
become a cornerstone of oncology. It is against this backdrop that the
January edition of eHealth magazine highlights how efforts are ongoing
to enhance immunity towards cancer. The cover story ‘Unravelling the
Magic Within’ underscores the strength of immunotherapy in offering
groundbreaking results in the fight against cancer.
Our special story ‘Newsmakers of 2016:Measuring the Pulse of 2016’
talks about how healthcare firms successfully rode on the robust primary
markets in 2016. The high growth potential of healthcare delivery
companies generated a high-level of interest among private equity firms
and overseas investors, with the year witnessing over a billion-dollar
inbound acquisition in the pharmaceuticals segment. We have also
carried interviews of some of the game-changers of the industry to get
their perspective on how fruitful the last year proved for them and how
they plan to expand their offerings in 2017.
The special feature ‘Outlook for 2017: Big Plans on the Anvil’ highlights
that the Indian healthcare sector, riding on the back of innovation,
disruptive approach and strategic tie-ups, is all set to take on a multitude
of challenges and continue to remain on the growth trajectory in 2017.
It highlights the big future plans of some of the major industry players
as also their expectations from the Government on the policy front to
propel growth of the Indian health sector.
We hope the ‘Industry Views’ in the 12th anniversary edition of the
magazine will offer our readers a new insight into various segments of
the health industry, helping them to keep innovating for an improved
healthcare delivery in India.
Looking forward to our readers’ valuable feedback.

Dr Ravi Gupta
Editor-in-Chief
ravi.gupta@elets.in

10 JANUARY / 2017
ehealth.eletsonline.com
 Unravelling the
MAGIC
WITHIN
Immunotherapy has
emerged
as a potent weapon in
oncologists’ armoury to
combat cancer, says
Dr Sajjan Rajpurohit, a
leading Medical Oncologist
with over 10 years of
experience in helping
people revive the body’s
magical immune system to
fight the deadly disease,
in an interview with Vivek
Ratnakar of Elets News
Network (ENN). Excerpts:

I
magine a scene from the 1978 Hollywood flick Pira-
nhas where a school of ferocious piranhas are hell bent
on sucking out the very life out of a bather in South
America’s Amazon River. Now, scale it down to millions
of times to molecular level and imagine a host of virus-
es, bacteria and parasites attacking our cells to cause
life-threatening diseases. But here is the catch. While the
bather in Amazon may not be so lucky as to be able to
defend himself from the deadly fish, our body’s magical
shield, called immune system, straightaway swings into
action to kill the potentially damaging foreign bodies.
References to our body’s immune system — a collec-
tion of structures and processes within the body -- are as
old as the human civilisation itself.
Athenian historian and general Thucydides, who sur-
vived the Plague of Athens in 430 BC, points out in his ‘His-
tory of the Peloponnesian War’ that people who had pre-
viously contracted the disease and recovered could help
treat the sick without falling ill a second time.
There exists a huge body of work on immunity which
was exploited by the likes of Louis Pasteur, Robert Koch,
Paul Ehrlich and Elie Metchnikoff, the founder of cellular
immunology, to make great advances in the field.
However despite all the strengths of the body’s immune
system, when it comes to combating cancer, which in Latin
means “crab or creeping ulcer” and was earlier applied to
tumours because the swollen veins around them resem-
bled the limbs of a crab, things start to change as cancer
cells -- being the altered self-cells -- escape it and continue
to grow uncontrollably.
“Tumour cells are unique in the sense that they are
body’s own cells but the body’s check mechanism is un-

12
able to control them. So, when a person develops cancer, it means that his
own body cells change into a type which grow abnormally, uninterrupted
and use body’s own resources to drive their growth. It has a harmful effect
on the body by sucking out all the energy towards their growth and not only
they grow locally but also spread to other parts of the body and disrupt the
other body functions,” says Dr Sajjan Rajpurohit, a renowned specialist in
medical oncology with a keen focus on immunotherapy and celluar therapy
for cancer.
“Our immunity fights against bacteria, viruses and fungi by recognising
them as foreign bodies different from normal cells. But cancer cells mask
themselves with normal cells to escape immunity. This phenomenon has
been known for many years and it is also known that people with
low immunity develop more cancers like people on steroids or
post-transplant patients,” he adds.

Efforts have been ongoing for many years to enhance

immunity towards cancer, according to Dr Rajpurohit.
“But till now we have not been able to make a break-
through. The specific immunity in the body is by T
cells, which are the main source of direct killing of
foreign body.”
After over two decades of untiring efforts to un-
derstand how tumours escape the body’s immune
system and how to use our own immunity to fight
cancer cells, groundbreaking results are being
seen in many small but landmark studies. The
impact seems so promising that The Science
magazine has labelled this approach as the
Breakthrough of the Year 2013.
Dr Rajpurohit recalls a case that bears a tes-
timony to how immunotherapy for cancer can
be the next big thing in combating the disease.
“In August 2015, a case of 56 years old gen-
tleman, a chronic heavy smoker who had been
smoking at least one to two packs of cigarettes
for the last 30 years, was presented to me. He was
having blood in the sputum, weight loss and cough
for the last six weeks, and there was some degree
of backache. He was referred to me by a chest phy-
sician who suspected a lesion in the x-ray.”
Dr Rajpurohit evaluated him and got the PET-CT
scan done, which showed there was a large lesion in
the right lung and there were metastases in bones
and the liver. He was confirmed to have lung can-
cer. “We started giving him chemotherapy and after
three cycles of chemotherapy, he started responding
to the treatment. But after six cycles of chemother-
apy, his condition worsened.”
By that time a new class of drugs was introduced
in the market, which might have been effective in such
cases. “So, I got his marker tested for immunotherapy
and he was found to possess a strong positivity, indicating
that he might get benefitted by immunotherapy.”
Drugs were procured from overseas because at that time
the drug was not available in India. Dr Rajpurohit started
his treatment in February last year. “After three doses of the
drug, he showed significant improvement and after six doses
of the drug he was almost like a healthy person. He regained

13
 Cover Story
his weight, his bone pain had disappeared and coughing
seized. He is now enjoying a normal life,” says Dr Rajpuro-
hit, who has been trained in cancer treatment at Rajiv
Gandhi Cancer Institute, Tata Memorial Hospital and MD
Anderson Cancer Center Houston, Texas.
As a result of the clinical cancer research, more people
are surviving cancer than ever before. According to Dr Ra-
jpurohit, the current survival rate has double over the last
two decades. “Patients are being identified with cancer at
an early stage leading to higher cure rates and patients
with advanced stage (3rd and 4th) are leading healthier
lives compared to before,” he says.
The Global Evolution of
Immunotherapy
The idea of using immunotherapy to treat cancer relies
heavily on tweaking our immune system’s potency to
fight cancerous cells. But understanding how exactly they
evade detection and ways to make them ‘visible’ to the im-
mune system is the subject of recent researches to make it
As per the statistics, there are 14-15
lakh new cancer patients each year
in India. In accordance with this fact,
the focus should be on its prevention.
We also need to make sure that the
care we provide offers real value to
our patients and we should put in an
effort to improve the affordability and
quality of medical care.
14
work, Dr Rajpurohit points out.
The early steps were taken by cancer immunologist
James Allison, now at the University of Texas MD Ander-
son Cancer Center in Houston, which is also the alma ma-
ter of Dr Rajpurohit.
In the late 1980s, French researchers who weren’t
thinking about cancer at all identified a new protein re-
ceptor on the surface of T cells, called cytotoxic T-lympho-
cyte antigen 4 or CTLA-4. Allison found that CTLA-4 puts
the brakes on T cells, and prevents them from launching
all-out immune attacks. He wondered whether blocking
the blocker, the CTLA-4 molecule, would set the immune
system free to destroy cancer.
CTLA-4 was discovered in 1987. In 1996, Allison pub-
lished a paper in the Science describing that antibodies
against CTLA-4 erased tumors in mice. It took more than
a decade to bring this approach from bench to bedside.
The Japanese biologists working on immune system
discovered a molecule expressed in dying T cells, which
they called programmed death 1, or PD-1.Oncologist Drew
Pardoll at the Johns Hopkins University, thought of the ap-
proach of using own T cells against the cancer cells. He
tied up with Medarex to test this antibody.
Last two years have seen more than a dozen of these
potent T cell stimulating antiboidies entering large clinical
trials with many getting breakthrough approval in cancers
of lung, head and neck, colon, Iymphoma and Melanoma.
For years, Steven Rosenberg at the National Cancer
Institute had harvested T cells that had migrated into tu-
mors, expanded them in the lab, and reinfused them into
patients, saving some with dire prognoses. The technique
worked only when doctors could access tumour tissue,
though, limiting its application. In 2010, Rosenberg pub-
lished encouraging results from so-called chimeric an-
tigen receptor therapy, or CAR therapy, a personalised
treatment that involved genetically modifying a patient’s T
cells to make them target tumour cells. Carl June
and his team at the University of Pennsylvania,
reported eye-catching responses to CAR thera-
py: patients with pounds of leukemia that melted
away. At a meeting in New Orleans, June’s team
and researchers at Memorial Sloan-Kettering
Cancer Center in New York reported that the
T-cell therapy in their studies put 45 of 75 adults
and children with leukemia into complete remis-
sion, although some later relapsed.
Indian Scenario
“As per the statistics, there are 14-15 lakh new
cancer patients each year in India. In accord-
ance with this fact, the focus should be on its
prevention. We also need to make sure that the
care we provide offers real value to our patients
and we should put in an effort to improve the
affordability and quality of medical care. The
National Cancer Control Programme should be
change-driven in terms of attitude and practice
 FRESH APPROACHES IN IMMUNOTHERAPY

Adoptive T Cell Therapy (ACT

It is a promising and rapidly advancing form of immunotherapy that overcomes tolerance by
harnessing the natural ability of immune cells to recognise and eliminate target cells in order to
generate durable anti-tumour immune responses. Adoptive T cell therapy involves the infusion of
externally manipulated T cells.
TIL Therapy
It involves extracting lymphocytes from tumour tissue, ex-vivo expansion with IL-2 followed by reinfusion.
A recent pooled analysis of TIL protocols reported a 20% complete response rate and a 70% overall
objective response rate in patients with melanoma.
Chimeric Antigen Receptors (CARs)
CARs offer one of the most promising strategies that includes an extracellular antibody single-chain
variable region joined with the intracellular portion of a TCR. CARs are unique in that they combine
the cytotoxic activity of a CD8+ T cell with the highly avid and MHC-independent antigen recognition
capacity of high-affinity monoclonal antibodies. To help overcome tolerance mechanisms, second
generation CARs include expression of co-stimulatory signaling domains in addition to the CAR.
Anti-tumour Antibodies
Monoclonal antibodies (mAb) directed against tumour associated antigens like CD20 and HER-2, are a
standard of care treatment in many malignancies. This technology was facilitated by the simultaneous
understanding of antibody structure and the application of hybridoma technology, leading to a Nobel
Prize for Jerne, Kohler, and Milstein in 1984.

with regards to cancer detection and management,” says
Dr Rajpurohit.
Despite numerous advances in medicine, according to a
1999 report on cancer occurrence in India it was estimat-
ed that more than 50 per cent of the total number of cancer
cases were reported among women. The crude incidence
of cancer in India is approximately 100 per 100,000 peo-
ple. Recent epidemiological studies done at the National
Cancer Registry programme in India report that cancer
burden in the country is 2.5 to 3 million.
“Corrective steps like cancer screening programme
should become a part of health awareness camps. There is
a need to create awareness among physicians to facilitate
early referral to cancer centers for improved outcomes,”
adds Dr Rajpurohit.
All the treatments are available in India. There is no
need to go to any foreign destination, according to him.
New Immunotherapy Approaches
Although the common treatment modalities, such as sur-
gery and/or chemo and radiotherapies, play major roles in
bringing down the mortality and morbidity to a significant
extent, complete cure is still uncertain and the prognosis
varies depending upon the stage and the type of the dis-
ease.
Even when patients experience tumour regression imme-
diately after therapy, recurrence or metastasis (spreading
to other parts of the body) can occur later.
Immunotherapies have the potential to be used to fight
cancer by either applying an external stimulus to the im-
mune system to make it act more “smarter”, or by provid-
ing the immune system with man-made or naturally-de-
rived tumor specific proteins made outside of the body so
that the immune system can recognise the tumour as a
foreign entity and destroy it.
“Efforts have been ongoing for many years to enhance
immunity against cancer but till now we have not been
able to make a breakthrough. The main immunity in the
body is through T cells. They are the direct source of kill-
ing the foreign body. How do these tumour cells interact
with them? They have their expression of some molecule
on the surface, which is known as PDL1 – Programmed
Death Ligand 1. They programme the death of T cell. We
have developed antibodies against PD or PDL1 which kills
the T cells. We have made antibodies which blocks the
interaction of T cells with PDL and PDL1. In this way, T
cells don’t die. This has happened recently. This is our key
achievement. They are called PDL1 antibody. They make
the T cell active,” says Dr Rajpurohit.
Scientists have also been able to genetically engineer
T cells. “We take T cells out of the body and insert new
receptors in them, which activates the T cells against the
tumour cells. These are called CAR T cells. It is a break-
through in blood cancer. Children who were left untreated
are getting treated due to this new technology. It is a big
success. The only challenge is that we are not able to mass
produce this technology on bigger scale,” adds the leading
oncologist, as he briefs about the new class of drugs which
is highly effective in fighting cancer.
Many of these new classes of drugs are available in In-
dia. The ones which are not available in the country can
easily be procured, according to Dr Rajpurohit.
“Cost is the only limitation for these new class of drugs.
But realizing their benefits, the government too is proac-
tively looking to bring the cost down. In the next five years,
their cost will definitely come down,” he says.

15
 Newsmakers of 2016

Exhibiting renewed confidence, the

Indian healthcare sector is poised to
break growth barriers in 2017 given a
favourable policy environment and
challenges that only seem to further
strengthen the industry’s resolve to
enhance quality to become competitive
globally. Elets News Network (ENN) takes
a look at how 2016 shaped up for the
Indian healthcare sector and how some
of the newsmakers in the industry pushed
the quality of healthcare delivery in the
country to the next level.

Measuring
the Pulse of

2016
T
he bygone year was an action-packed year for the
Indian Healthcare industry. Exhibiting strong confi-
dence in their capabilities to scale new heights, sev-
eral Indian healthcare companies in pharmaceutical,
diagnostics businesses, multispecialty hospital chains, an
oncology chain, successfully rode the primary market wave
by launching their initial public offerings (IPOs).
The acquisition and merger scenario, too, saw a lot of
action happening with China’s Shanghai Fosun Pharma-
ceutical Co striking a $1.4-billion deal with Gland Phar-
ma Limited to acquire 86 per cent stake in the Hydera-
bad-based company.
The high growth potential of healthcare delivery com-
panies generated a high level of interest among private
equity firms, as several Indian pharma majors closed stra-
tegic deals in domestic as well as overseas market.
The single-specialty sector including hospital chains in
eye care, mother and child care, dental care and oncology
segments attracted good investments, even as multispe-
cialty hospital chains like Hyderabad-based CARE Hospi-
tals raised funds to further their expansion plans to im-
prove healthcare delivery across the country.
The end of regulatory uncertainty with regard to in-vit-
ro fertilisation (IVF) also significantly improved invest-
ment environment with PE investments beginning to flow
into the promising segment.
The Indian healthcare tech startups continued to show
traction with 73 deals worth over $113 million struck,
highlighting the future potential of disruptive thinking in
healthcare delivery.
Despite facing opposition, online pharmacies, too, at-
tracted significant investments as the government initi-
ated the process of setting clear regulatory guidelines to
regulate them.

16 JANUARY / 2017
ehealth.eletsonline.com
 Newsmakers of 2016

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ehealth.eletsonline.com 17
 Newsmakers
Newsmakers
of 2016 of 2016

KEY IPOS IN HEALTHCARE SECTOR

Name of Company IPO Size Result
Syngene International `550-cr Over-subscribed 32 times
Dr Lal PathLabs `638-cr Over-subscribed 33 times
Alkem Laboratories `1,350-cr Over-subscribed 44 times
Narayana Hrudayalaya `613-cr Over-subscribed 9 times
Healthcare Global Enterprises `357.30-cr Over-subscribed 2 times
Thyrocare Technologies `479.21-cr Over-subscribed 73 times
Laurus Labs `1,331.79-cr Over-subscribed 4.5 times

MAJOR DEALS IN HEALTHCARE SECTOR

● Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical Co striking a $1.4-billion deal with Gland Pharma Limited to acquire 86
per cent stake.
● Dr. Reddy’s Labs signs a deal with Israeli drug maker Teva, which has been divesting its assets in the US
and Europe, to acquire a portfolio of eight abbreviated new drug applications (ANDA) in the US for $350
million.
● Cipla closes acquisitions of InvaGen and Exelan in a $550 million deal to bolster its presence in the US.
● Sun Pharma pays $175 million to Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis for rights over advanced skin cancer
drug Odomzo.

Besides taking cognizance of the big-ticket investments – both inbound and outbound -- and fund raising happening
throughout the year, we contacted several captains of the Indian healthcare sector to know what they were able to
achieve in 2016. Here is what they shared with us.

Dr Jintendar Kumar Sharma, Director & CEO of the

Andhra Pradesh MedTech Zone (AMTZ) Limited and
Advisor (Health), Government of Andhra Pradesh

KEY ACHIEVEMENTS: Dr Mayank Somani, CEO, Medics Super Speciality

● Rationalisation of specifications to ensure competitive
bidding in healthcare technology division
● Initiating equipment maintenance programme in public
private partnerships for effective upkeep
● Starting medical devices adverse events reporting sys-
tem in the country
● Department of Healthcare Technology at NHSRC rec-
ognised as the WHO collaborating centre for medical
devices making in the entire South-East Asia
● Driving growth of Andhra Pradesh MedTech Zone
(AMTZ), India’s first medical device manufacturing
zone spread over 270 acres in Visakhapatnam
Hospital
KEY ACHIEVEMENTS:
● Driving the upcoming state-of-the-art 300-bed super
speciality tertiary care hospital, the first in Lucknow
and whole central and eastern UP
● Tied up with doctors, pharmaceutical companies and
bigger NGOs to ensure inclusive quality healthcare is
provided to all irrespective of their social status
● Guiding development of a strong IT infrastructure and
the best technology in the healthcare space to make
healthcare delivery and work flow seamlessly

18 18 JANUARY / 2017JANUARY / 2017

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 Newsmakers of 2016

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What is the mission of Curespring
for bringing quality healthcare
access universal and affordable?
Our goal is to address the issues of access
to a specialist doctor, optimum utilisation
of his/her time, enable evidence-based
treatment and reduced cost to patient
for specialist care. Curespring (cloud-
based connected health platform)
enables establishing a specialist doctors’
connected healthcare delivery:
• Base Curespring platform
• We have integrated Curespring
with our HIS package, enabling
remote consultation for hospital
patients. We are enhancing HIS
to offer hospital performance
analysis, integration with other
diagnostic apps and mobile
enablement – IP Case sheet &
enables real-time consultation amongst
doctors and hence enhances quality of
care for patients. Technology enables
optimum utilisation of specialist doctors’
JANUARY / 2017
19
time. Technology enables connecting
all stakeholders (diagnostics/providers,
ehealth.eletsonline.com
medical devices, doctors and patients)
on one platform and hence clinical
pathways are feasible by ensuring
consistency of treatment.
 Newsmakers of 2016

Dr Nand Kumar Jairam, CMD, Columbia Asia Dr Shankar Narang, Chief Operating Officer, Paras
Hospitals Healthcare

KEY ACHIEVEMENTS: Key Achievements:

● Expanding super speciality services like Liver Trans- ● Positioning Paras Healthcare as a community player
plantation, Bone Marrow Transplantation, Deep Brain with stress on accessibility, affordability and quality
Stimulation, High-end Urology, High-end Neurosurgical ● Providing specialties based on regional needs.
procedures, etc. ● Driving the hospital chain’s expansion strategy that
● Establishing centres of excellence (CoE) around spe- has been broken into two phases -- Phase 1 is from 2015
cialties like kidney transplant, gastric and liver diseas- to 2020 and Phase 2 from 2021 to 2028. Expansion will
es and orthopedics primarily be in Tier 2 cities of North India.
● Standardising clinical terminologies through the adop-
tion of SNOMED CT for all the procedures and also the
adoption of ICD 10 for diagnoses
● Successfully running 100-bed hospitals in Tier-II towns
like Patiala, Mysore and Ghaziabad.
● Plans to commission 206-bed hospital in Sarjapur, Ban-
galore during the fourth quarter of the 2017. Plans are
also afoot to expand in the Pune area as well

Neha Rastogi, Co-founder of Agatsa

Key Achievements:
● Launching disruptive tech-driven devices to make car-
diac care simple and cost-effective
● Launching Sanket, a credit card sized ECG monitor-
ing device, which measures 12-lead ECGs without any
leads or wires or electrodes
Dr Sajan Nair, Group COO, Zydus Hospitals & Health- ● Plans to launch a complete range of end-to-end solu-
care Research Pvt Ltd tions for cardiac care by bringing together cardiac
healthcare providers, dieticians and physical thera-
Key Achievements: pists
● cGreen OT, NABH and NABL accreditions in 18 months ● Gearing up to Beta launch of cardiac health platform
of operations called “Sanket Coach Programme.”
● Coming up with full-fledged radiation centre and on-
cology unit with latest technology in partnership with
reputed oncology institute of US/Europe
● Plans to set up seven hospitals -- five in major cities of
Gujarat, one each in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan
● Plans to tie up with like-minded hospitals in tier-II and
III cities across India and in Africa
● Executed 214 community-based educational pro-
grammes as part of its CSR initiative
● Robust medical tourism programme for foreigners and
NRIs

20 JANUARY / 2017
ehealth.eletsonline.com
 Newsmakers of 2016

JANUARY / 2017
ehealth.eletsonline.com 21
 Newsmakers of 2016

Leading the
HEALTHCARE
REVOLUTION
Having led several key projects and health technology initiatives and research
in leading institutions from New Delhi’s All India Institute of Medical Science to
World Health Organisation-Switzerland, Dr Jitendar Kumar Sharma, Director &
CEO of the AMTZ Limited and Advisor (Health), Government of Andhra Pradesh,
is a force to reckon with when it comes to guiding the ongoing healthcare
revolution in the country. In an interview with Elets News Network (ENN),
Dr Sharma speaks in detail on how medical technology landscape in India is
witnessing a paradigm shift, his personal contribution to make it possible besides
the ways to harness the “cumulative potential of health as well as medical
technology”.

As a healthcare leader with
experience in supporting the
entire range of healthcare
delivery systems from a primary
health centre to World Health
Organisation, how do you
plan to change the health and
medical technology landscape
in India?
Medical technology landscape in a
country can change for better only
with coherent synergies of a large
number of individuals, agencies
and institutions. However, for it to
change, we will also need to philo-
sophically find the convergence be-
tween service delivery and industry
promotion. These are generally seen
as two distinct activities. However,
the reality is that service delivery fu-
els consumption which is the core of
demand generation and industry pro-
motion. Similarly, balanced industry
promotion with judicious use of re-
sources could make service delivery
more affordable. What we intend do-
ing is to connect these two paradigms
to harness the cumulative potential of
health as well as medical technology.
You have done pioneering
work for establishing medical
devices testing laboratories in
India, initiating programme for
tracking of medical devices
adverse event and other such
projects. Please provide us
a brief overview of your key
achievements in the field of
healthcare.
My role as the head of healthcare tech-
nology division started with ration-
alisation of specifications to ensure
competitive bidding. Thereafter, we
started the equipment maintenance
programme in public private partner-
ships for effective upkeep. This has
been a unique and highly successful
programme which has increased the
upkeep time of available medical
equipment as well as initiated a large
market for spares and accessories.
In parallel, reports were drafted for
setting up of first dedicated medical
devices testing laboratories in which
we played a crucial technical role.
Efforts were also made to start the
medical devices adverse events re-
porting system in the country which
was taken by Indian Pharmacopoeia
Commission with support of Sree-
ChitraTirunal Institute of Medical
Sciences & Technology. Fortunately,
the Department of Healthcare Tech-
nology at NHSRC was recognised
as the WHO collaborating centre for
medical devices making it the only
med tech centre of such recognition
in the entire South-East Asia.
In your role as the CEO of
Andhra Pradesh MedTech Zone
Ltd, what are the opportuni-
ties in the offing for the Indian
equipment manufacturers at
this first of its kind facility in
Asia?
The creation of Andhra Pradesh Med-
Tech Zone (AMTZ) is based on the
fact that medical devices manufac-
turing requires certain high invest-
ment facilities which are too capital
intensive for individual manufactures

22 JANUARY / 2017
ehealth.eletsonline.com
 Newsmakers of 2016

to invest upon. A park with in-house and a plethora of such pro-public

high investment scientific facilities The creation of Andhra initiatives are creating the right bal-
ance of access, supply and partner-
would help manufacturers reduce the
cost of manufacturing. While the park
Pradesh MedTech Zone ships required a bubbling healthcare
would have all such facilities in-house (AMTZ) is based on eco-system. We are striving now to
to reduce manufacturing process achieve the right balance between
costs, it would have state-of-the-art
the fact that medical involvement of public health institu-
250-300 independent manufactur- devices manufacturing tions in core clinical activities and
ing units, each over a built-in ready undertaking strategic purchasing of
to use area in 1 acre, 0.50 acre or requires certain high non-core clinical functions such as
0.25acre at a very cost effective long investment facilities equipment maintenance and the like.
term lease rate for 33 years. Located
in an area which is well connected which are too capital How technology can aid
with railways, roadways, waterways intensive for individual healthcare for all?
and airways with near presence of Technology is the sole strategy that
industrial corridors, port and har- manufactures to invest can democratise skills and resources
bour to reduce logistical costs, AMTZ
in Visakhapatnam is India’s first
upon. A park with in- available in the country for optimum
healthcare outcomes.
medical device manufacturing zone house high investment
spread over 270 acres.
scientific facilities would
help manufacturers
What are the key challenges
you have been facing in imple-
reduce the cost of
menting the AMTZ project? manufacturing.
There are no challenges that cannot
be resolved with effective partner-
ships with stakeholders. In AMTZ,
the tremendous support of manufac-
turers and scientific service provid-
ers has made our journey effortless.

What are the key issues being

faced by the Indian medical
equipment manufacturers?
How can these be resolved?
The two issues faced by the Indian
medical equipment manufacturers
are perhaps – support to meet quality
benchmarks, and non-tariff barriers
such as near absence of medical de-
vice regulations. Fortunately, while
AIMED and Quality Council of India
have come up with IC-MED which
is a voluntary certification scheme,
appropriate authorities with Govern-
ment of India are putting all efforts to
put in regulatory regime in place.

Please share your views on

inclusive healthcare in India.
How government is involved in
making this a reality?
Recent launch of National Diagnos-
tics Programme including tele-radiol-
ogy and CT scan facility in public hos-
pitals, National Dialysis Programme

JANUARY / 2017
ehealth.eletsonline.com 23
 Corporate Interview

Healthcare
SOLUTION
with Relevance
CURA Healthcare, with its comprehensive range
of imaging diagnostics and critical care solutions,
has been constantly evolving with changing times
to offer healthcare solutions having relevance
for its customers making day to day operations a
pleasant experience. S Kalyanaraman, General
Manager-Key Accounts (Sales and Marketing),
CURA Healthcare Pvt Ltd, tells Elets News Network
(ENN) about the value company’s key products and
services provide to users. How had been 2016 in terms of
growth for the Indian medical
device sector?
Please tell us how CURA Health- Which latest technologies you Medical equipment market in India
care Pvt Ltd is different from incorporate in your offerings is entering an age of democratisa-
other companies in the medi- to help improve the quality of tion as power shifts from hospitals,
cal device market? healthcare delivery? doctors and other care givers to pa-
CURA brings “value for performance” Our technologies address the infra- tients, potentially leading to dramatic
solutions with low product ownership structure and other challenges faced healthcare improvement. The market
cost. The solutions are backed by best by the customer in his day to day op- has been growing consistently over
in class after sales service support. erations. Be it ultrasound, digital ra- the last few years regardless of glob-
CURA understands local challenges diography, x-ray, or critical care solu- al recession.
well and thus is able to offer relevant tions, our technology serve them with
solutions to the customer. relevance. We have designed and de- Which technological trends
veloped Digital Radiography systems you saw evolving in 2016,
What are the key products and which works at 15amps and still offer which you see have potential
services that drive the compa- power to do all applications. This al- to impact the medical device
ny’s growth? lows the system to be used without market?
CURA offers a comprehensive range need of high electricity power require- More than technological advance-
of imaging diagnostics and critical ment. The system works even without ment, it is cost optimisation model
care solutions. In fact, we are the power. which is the on-going trend and will
only Indian medtech company to offer extend in 2017 also. MNCs and Indi-
such depth and breadth of solutions. What are your expansion plans an medical equipment manufacturers
Digital radiography, mobile DR, HF in near future? How do you see are working on solutions which are
x-ray, C-arm, digital and analogue yourself evolving in 2017? more relevant to India’s tier-II, III and
mammography, BMD, fluoroscopy, Product and geographic expansion rural markets than urban cities. As
thermal mammography, ultrasound is in the anvil. We have received CE the market is shifting towards tier-II,
and colour doppler makes up imag- accreditation for our DR system and tier-III cities and rural India, we need
ing diagnostic portfolio. In critical shortly will receive CE certificate for to understand the challenges users
care, we offer complete range of pa- critical care products. With this, we will face to offer relevant solutions. More-
tient monitoring system, defibrillator, be able to penetrate emerging markets. over, change in business models, ser-
ECG, pulse oximeter, stress test sys- We see great opportunities to grow and vice support models, financing struc-
tem, dialyzer reprocessor, bicarbo- aim to become a Rs 500 crore company ture, etc will play significant role in
nate mixer, etc. in the next couple of years. deciding the outcome.

24 JANUARY / 2017
ehealth.eletsonline.com
 Corporate Interview
DIAGNOSTICS
for Masses
Krsnaa Diagnostics, one of the fastest growing diagnostics chains in India, has
developed a strong network across the country through various social and
charitable activities in the field of healthcare. Pallavi Jain, MD, Krsnaa Diagnostics,
in conversation with Elets News Network, highlights the quality services offered by
her organisation at affordable prices to the masses.
What are the guiding principles
driving the growth of Krsnaa
Diagnostics?
Our vision and aim at Krsnaa Diag-
nostics has always been to provide
quality healthcare at affordable pric-
es and reaching out to as many people
as we can in the rural India. Diagnosis
plays a crucial role in evidence-based
treatments, but since it is extremely
expensive for majority of the people
we look forward to offer diagnostic
services at affordable prices.
Having gained the confidence of
patients and clients, we have em-
barked on an expansion programme
to make our services available across
the country through public private
partnership mode.
We have also partnered with var-
ious government, private medical
colleges and hospitals to provide our
services.
26 JANUARY / 2017
ehealth.eletsonline.com
With so many diagnostic chains
operating in the country, how
do you differentiate yourself as
a quality healthcare provider?
Firstly, for us quality is the key. We
use high-end equipment with latest
technology in partnership with GE
Medical Systems, ROCHE, Lilac, Hor-
iba, Mindray, etc, to provide unparal-
leled diagnostic services.
Secondly, we offer our services
across the country at almost the same
price. We are available in 10 states
and across 1,400 plus locations pro-
viding services 24/7 throughout the
year delivering quality healthcare to
the masses. Krsnaa has so far report-
ed over 10 lakh scans and has a team
of 70 radiologist on its panel. At Krs-
naa Diagostics, we have a tradition
of offering services at the same rates
without applying any kind of extra
charges.
To meet quality standards, we al-
ways adopt the latest technology and
equipment. Likewise, in the MRI seg-
ment, our machines range from 0.2
Tesla to latest 3 Tesla machine and
Single Slice CT to 128 slice CT scan-
ners.
Krsnaa provides services to pa-
tients across district hospitals, CHCs
and primary health centres and pri-
vate hospitals, including corporate
tie ups. We have made sure our team
includes experts and reliable mem-
bers to monitor and assure accurate
diagnosis at competitive pricing. All
Krsnaa centres have well trained
staff who make it their mission to lay
We have embarked on an
expansion programme
to make our services
available across the
country through public
private partnership
mode
ample stress on empathy and hand
holding, making patients feel com-
fortable and at ease.
What’s new in the imaging
technology space that you as
a company aspire to adopt to
improve healthcare delivery?
Krsnaa has always believed in adapt-
ing the latest technologies and we
have customised solutions for various
sectors.
Adapting with high end solutions, real
time monitoring, safety analysis, R&D
helps us improvise and upgrade our
offerings to our clients and patients.
Where do you see yourself five-
years down the line? Please
share your future goals.
Krsnaa has its current presence in
10 States which includes Jammu,
Himachal Pradesh, Odisha, Madhya
Pradesh, Gujrat, Andhra Pradesh,
Maharshtra, UttarPradesh, Tamil-
nadu and further plans to expand in
rest of the country with a aim to pro-
vide Quality Health care at affordable
prices.
 Corporate Interview

PIONEERING
ACCESS
to Quality
Healthcare
Taking tertiary healthcare
to Tier-II cities and
smaller towns of India,
Nayati Healthcare has
pioneered a revolution
that promises to provide
mass access to quality
health services in the
interiors of the country,
says Dr RK Mani, Group
CEO Medical and
Chairman, Critical
Care, Pulmonology and
Sleep Medicine, Nayati
Healthcare & Research
in an interview with Elets
News Network (ENN).
Excerpts:

How is tertiary healthcare

scenario getting transformed
in smaller cities and towns of
India?
Quality tertiary care is an unmet need
in the smaller cities and towns of In-
dia. Over the years, the primary and
secondary levels of healthcare have
grown but proportionate evolution
at the tertiary level of care has not
taken place over vast regions, espe-
cially in the interiors of the country.
In these regions, there is at best un-
organised and patchy development of

28 JANUARY / 2017
ehealth.eletsonline.com

super specialty care. As tertiary care
is concentrated mainly in big cities
and metros, patients in the interiors
have to cover long distances in order
to access emergency services, critical
care, cancer care, cardiac, gastroin-
testinal, renal, orthopedics, mother
and child care and other medical and
surgical services. A radical reform in
our healthcare strategy is required to
raise the level of healthcare in these
regions, virtually from the scratch.
How Nayati Healthcare is in-
volved in changing the health-
care delivery system in India?
The premise for setting up of Nayati
Healthcare was to fill the gap in the
healthcare space that had surfaced
due to the lack of organised health-
care in tier-II&III cities of India. To
raise the level, particularly upto the
tertiary referral care, Nayati focuses
on smaller cities in Northern India.
The flagship 351-bed super specialty
hospital was started in Mathura and a
chain of such hospitals is on the anvil
going forward. This initiative should
start the transformation and rapid-
ly reduce the widening urban-rural
healthcare gap in the country.
Please tell us about your key
offerings for the healthcare sec-
tor and how these are driving
the company’s growth.
Our offerings include setting up of
tertiary level healthcare facilities to
provide comprehensive care with all
specialties under one roof. This mod-
el has been adopted because of inter-
dependence of specialty departments
and because in smaller cities and
towns standalone facilities would not
be able to meet the overall needs. Our
charity wing, through well equipped
mobile medical units have taken pri-
mary care to more than 4 lac patients
into the rural interiors of the Western
UP region. Through community activ-
ities we have taken initiatives to raise
awareness of Health and Wellness as
well. Answering to these felt needs
would certainly extend our presence
and our opportunities for meaningful
contribution to the overall develop-
ment of the region. We believe that
with a world class hospital in Mathu-
ra, medical tourism can extend to the
interiors of the country as there is
substantial pilgrims traffic in Brajb-
hoomi.
Which key opportunities you
see emerging in the healthcare
space in India?
Poor access to healthcare by a large
proportion of the population has been
a challenge that has also brought
great opportunities on several fronts.
Besides extending access to quality
healthcare infrastructure and reduc-
ing the barriers to delivery, I foresee
a return of trained medical, nursing
and paramedical personnel from the
big metros to smaller towns and cit-
ies of India. It would also improve the
There are new
opportunities for
disseminating
healthcare education
where there has been
none, thereby improving
the scope of modern
healthcare
retention of medical trainees in the
region seeking advanced experience
and training. New data and patient
care experience in research would
enrich professionals personally and
healthcare information in gener-
al. There are new opportunities for
disseminating healthcare education
where there has been none. Lastly,
there is opportunity to address the
issue of cost and inclusivity through
fiscal efficiency and extending the
penetration of health insurance.
Please tell us about the major
challenges faced by health-
care providers like Nayati in
making healthcare affordable
and more inclusive.
Access to quality healthcare has been
denied for millions by reasons of geo-
graphic distances, availability of ex-
pertise and affordability. Experience
in Mathura showed us first hand the
Corporate Interview
high density of disease burden in the
region. It confirmed our estimate that
the region would need all specialities
under one roof.
Providing quality intensive care
in a manner that the local population
finds it affordable has been a ma-
jor challenge. To balance the cost of
setting up of infrastructure and cost
of personnel against affordability is
another challenge. Economy of scale
should be the basis of improving af-
fordability. For this purpose, reach-
ing out to the communities to build
relationships of trust and raising
their awareness of new facilities now
within their reach and being able to
deliver end-to-end healthcare solu-
tions have been the most important
challenges.
The other major challenge has
been to bring together top profession-
als in full-time capacity to pursue ca-
reers in Mathura because local avail-
ability, especially of super specialists,
is scarce. Of course this is also an
opportunity to train professionals
settled in the region who do not have
easy access to continuing medical
education. This would contain the
exodus of such personnel to the big
cities. It has also been a challenge to
settle personnel from across India in
the region and provide them quality
living conditions together with educa-
tional facilities for their children. We
have efficiently put together infra-
structure. This means that we choose
equipment and technology judicious-
ly to avoid over-capitalisation.
How do you think India can fill
the wide rural-urban divide in
quality healthcare services?
Ideally in India there should be no ru-
ral-urban divide as far as healthcare
is concerned because we have an ob-
ligation to provide healthcare equita-
bly, irrespective of the region or the
socio economic strata.
In my opinion the existing ru-
ral-urban divide can be bridged by
breaking the barriers of accessibility
mentioned above. I think the initia-
tives taken by Nayati are extremely
significant because we are among
the first to take treatment directly to
those who need it most.
JANUARY / 2017
ehealth.eletsonline.com 29
 Corporate Interview

PRECURSOR
of Change
Apollo came up with the idea of starting the first multi-specialty emergency centre
when there was no concept of emergency healthcare services in the country.
Apollo as a group has been and will be dedicated in improving the healthcare
facilities in India, says Dr K Hari Prasad, President-Apollo Hospitals Group, in
conversation with Sudheer Goutham of Elets News Network (ENN).

Please tell us about the steps taken by Apollo in
terms of emergency services.
Twenty-one years ago there was no concept of emergen-
cy healthcare in the country. Back then it was known as
casualty. If a patient visited the hospital, he or she was
just referred to the respective department. In between
these referral processes a lot of precious time was lost
and unfortunately the critical patient had to bear the con-
sequences.
Dr Prathap C. Reddy (Founder-Chairman of Apollo
Hospitals) then came up with an idea of starting emergen-
cy services. In 1996, the first multi-specialty emergency
service was launched by Apollo. We started the first ac-
cidental specialty hospital at Kavadi Guda in Hyderabad.
Because there were no specialty back then, there were
lack of dedicated professionals/technicians and ambu-
lances to support this initiative.
That point of time we got support from a group of doc-
tors. We were round the clock dedicated to the emergency
services and whenever there was a call from the patient’s
end we were ready for service.
We made eight emergency rooms and all of them were
interconnected. We even started an emergency helpline
(1066) for providing round the clock assistance to the pa-
tients.
Dr Reddy wanted us to spread the technique and open
emergency centres across the country. We took the initi-
ative and designed a specialised ambulance. We started
training programmes for doctors and paramedics. We rep-
licated this model across our group of hospitals.
Several professionals, who received trainings under us
are now a part of many eminent institutions.
Today, the most satisfying fact is that majority of the
hospitals have adopted emergency healthcare model and
have even launched an emergency helpline number. This
has created new vistas for healthcare professionals.
Based on this success, the government also started
thinking about taking initiatives in the field of emergency.
Today emergency is an established specialty.

Apollo has been a leader in bringing new tech-

nology in the healthcare industry. What are your
views in this regard?
Whatever new initiatives have been taken in the Indian
healthcare industry, has been brought it by Apollo. We are
at a stage where we are taking a lot of initiatives in im-
proving our services.
Essentially we are trying to bring in better healthcare
facilities which are cost effective too. We are doing a lot of
work in the field of Cancer.
Some of our initiatives include
Robotic Surgery: It helps the surgeon to see better and
be precise on his/her technique. It is a huge advancement
in the field of multiple specialties, especially for segments

30 JANUARY / 2017
ehealth.eletsonline.com

like neurology, gynecology, gastroen-
terology etc.
Personal medicine: If four pa-
tients get a similar disease, their
symptoms can be alike but the dis-
ease will have different effect on each
patient. We are therefore working on
personalised medicine. This technol-
ogy can bring specific treatment for
the patients.
Preventive healthcare: If a per-
son comes for a health check up, we
design a personalised package for
the checkup.
Tell us about your presence in
the major cities.
We have our presence in almost all
major cities in the country. Dr Red-
dy as a chairman believes in quali-
ty healthcare for all. So we decided
that once we are done with advance
healthcare in major cities, we will
then concentrate on how to deal with
healthcare in Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities
in the country. We developed the con-
cept of Apollo reach hospitals for Tier
1 and Tier 2 cities and these hospitals
are providing services that are ad on
to the already available services.
We have recently inaugurated a
Dr Prathap C. Reddy
(Founder-Chairman
of Apollo Hospitals)
came up with an idea
of starting emergency
services. In 1996, the
first multi-specialty
emergency service was
launched by Apollo
hospital in Mumbai. This hospital
is equipped with all the advanced
healthcare facilities available in the
country.
Access to healthcare is still a
challenge in the country. What
are your plans for the rural
regions?
We cannot be present everywhere.
Initially, it is important to understand
health care. Healthcare is divided
into primary, secondary and tertiary
category.
Most of the people require the
Corporate Interview
primary healthcare and then they
gradually move to tertiary depending
on the necessity. We are essentially
providing tertiary, the real hind end
healthcare and secondary health-
care. In the areas we have our reach;
we also have clinics and daycare sur-
gery centres and cradles.
We strongly believe that there is a
need to grow but there are challenges
as well. We don’t have enough trained
professionals in the healthcare sec-
tor.
Kindly tell us about your pro-
jects with the government
sector.
We have taken a lot of initiatives in
the Public-Private Partnership. We
run few hospitals in PPP model. Del-
hi’s Indraprastha Apollo is our part-
nership initiative with the Delhi Gov-
ernment. We are also working with
the Andhra Pradesh government
and running their primary health
centres.
Apollo has telemedicine centres
in the northeastern India. We have
also launched our online programme
called Ask Apollo, a banquet of ser-
vices with specilaised consultation.
JANUARY / 2017
ehealth.eletsonline.com 31
 Newsmakers of 2016

Looking for
New Horizons
of GROWTH
Paras Hospitals, one of the leading healthcare
providers in India with focus on accessibility,
affordability and quality, is looking for new
horizons of growth under the leadership of
Dr Shankar Narang, Chief Operating Officer,
Paras Healthcare. With plans afoot to bridge
the healthcare gap in Tier-II cities of North India,
Dr Narang tells Elets News Network (ENN) how
the group will go about it and what are the key
differentiators that separate it from other leaders
in the Indian healthcare space.

As the Chief Operating Officer misation. Man power utilisation and

of Paras Healthcare, what are
your plans to improve opera-
tional efficiency of the group
hospitals?
Paras Healthcare is a unique hospital
chain that differentiates from the oth-
er healthcare providers by delivering
affordable, accessible and quality
care. It is an honour to be associated
with the only healthcare provider in
India that has been able to cross 1000
beds without any equity funding.
Paras Healthcare as per the or-
ganisation vision is set to expand
to number of other cities in city and
abroad. As the COO it shall be my en-
deavour to focus on clinical structur-
ing, operational efficiency, evidence
based medicine, inclusion of the best
HR based practices, quality orienta-
tion and training along with patient
feedback and gap bridging.
My background in operations and
costing shall help me streamline the
healthcare operations and set cer-
tain systems that aim at cost opti-
robust clinical protocols shall govern
our policies.
Patient feedback, customer rela-
tionship management and above all
IT practices that can help bridge the
gap between the patient and the doc-
tors shall be introduced.
We, at Paras Healthcare, strongly
feel that operational efficiency is a
goal set for the entire organisation;
each department plays a pivotal role
in ensuring the deliverance of the en-
deavour.
Please apprise us about the
hospital group’s key achieve-
ments and its USP.
Paras Healthcare is a provider for the
common man. We are positioned as
community players and ensure that
we always provide facilities and ser-
vices based on three tenets of health-
care delivery – Accessibility, Afforda-
bility and Quality.
Our endeavours have been instru-
mental in bridging the healthcare gap

32 JANUARY / 2017
ehealth.eletsonline.com

and empowering the common man
with access to affordable, accessible
and quality care.
PARAS GURGAON – The flag ship
hospital is positioned as most accessi-
ble and affordable healthcare provider.
PARAS PATNA – The first corporate
hospital of Bihar has been instru-
mental in providing specialised can-
cer, cardiac, ortho and kidney care
facilities to the state. Largest private
healthcare provider in Bihar and
first to provide kidney transplant fa-
cility, bone marrow transplant unit ,
PET CT and 128 Slice CT Scan Facil-
ity in Bihar.
PARAS DARBHANGA – The first
cardiac and critical unit of Mithilan-
chal. The hospital has empowered
the region with 24X7 specialised
care in neurosciences, cardiology,
ortho & trauma care.
PARAS PANCHKULA – The special-
ised mother & child care centre is
the first in the region to provide fetal
medicine expertise in the Tricity. It
is also the first boutique maternity
care hospital to provide perinatal
care.
PARAS NEW DELHI – An afforda-
ble and specialised mother & child
care centre that aims at providing
maternity care, neonatology care
along with special programs for the
mother and the new born.
PARAS PANCHKULA* - The first
multi super specialty and cancer
care hospital of the region.
PARAS NOIDA*- The first green
mother and child care centre of the
region.
Which key services differ-
entiate you as a healthcare
provider?
We specialise in providing those spe-
cialties that the region needs.
In Gurgaon we have the best neuro-
sciences services. The team of doc-
tors under the guidance of Dr (Prof)
VS Mehta, Padmashree, provides the
best neurology, neurosurgery diag-
nosis and treatment protocols. They
are the only in the region to special-
ise in deep seated tumours. Other
centres of excellence such as cardi-
ology, joint replacement surgery and
kidney transplant provide affordable
and quality care to the common man.
In Patna, we are the first in the
state to provide a comprehensive
cancer care centre equipped with Bi-
har’s and Jharkhand’s first PET CT
and latest third generation radiation
technology. We also specialise in or-
thopedics and trauma care under Dr
John Mukhopadhaya.
In Darbhanga, we specialise in
providing emergency care services
along with cardiology, neurosciences
and ortho care.
In Panchkula, we specialise in pro-
viding Fetal Medicine – the only cen-
tre in the tricity that specialises in
the expertise.
Over the years through our due
diligence and research we have been
able to bridge the gap of medical
services and provide super specialty
care that the region needs the most.
What are your expansion plans
in near future?
The expansion strategy of Paras
Healthcare has been broken into two
phases; Phase 1 is from 2015 to 2020
and Phase 2 is from 2021 to 2028. Ex-
pansion will primarily be in Tier 2 cit-
ies of North India. Our target is cities
with a population of 2m+ that have
a Medical College. The focus will be
on establishing tertiary care centers
that focus on oncology, cardiology,
orthopedics and neurology. These
will evolve into specialised transplant
centres.
By 2020, Paras Healthcare intends
to establish tertiary healthcare fa-
cilities in other Tier-II and Tier-III
cities too, to bridge the gap between
demand and supply. Five years from
now we will have bed strength of
1,500.
Paras Healthcare works
on the principle of
bridging the gap - by
providing exceptional
medical expertise,
infrastructure and
technology to areas that
lack the same.
Newsmakers of 2016
What are the key values un-
derpinning the hospital’s vision
and philosophy?
Paras Healthcare works on the prin-
ciple of bridging the gap - by provid-
ing exceptional medical expertise,
infrastructure and technology to ar-
eas that lack the same. Paras Health-
care through its various endeavors
has been able to initiate a healthcare
revolution numerous areas.
Paras mainly adheres to its three
tenets of healthcare – present acces-
sibility of healthcare in the region,
presence of affordable healthcare at
the location and existence of a spe-
cialised quality healthcare provider.
Please tell us about some re-
cent initiatives undertaken by
the group.
Paras Healthcare has just taken the
following initiatives at Paras Patna
and Paras Darbhanga :
● Launched the first 128 slice CT
machine in Bihar to provide ex-
ceptional radio-diagnosis
● Launched the first kidney trans-
plant centre in Bihar
● Launched the first bone marrow
transplant unit in Bihar
● Launched the first cardiac care
unit in Darbhanga – equipped
with the latest cath lab and car-
diac surgery operation theatre.
We have also announced a new
multi-super speciality hospital in
Panchkula – Paras Hospitals, Panch-
kula. Expected to commence opera-
tions within a year, this will be the
first hospital in Panchkula to provide
latest and most comprehensive can-
cer care facilities including medical,
surgical, radiation and nuclear med-
icine services. The hospital will fo-
cus on a range of specialties includ-
ing cardiac sciences (cardithoracic
and vascular surgery and cath lab
services), neurosciences (neurology
and neurosurgery), orthopedics and
joint replacement, and trauma.
The coming financial year will
also witness the launch of Paras
Bliss, Noida - The first dedicated
mother and child care facility in the
city with expertise in the fields of
fetal medicine and development sup-
portive care for neonates.
JANUARY / 2017
ehealth.eletsonline.com 33
 Corporate Interview
Advantage BIG DATA
Analytics for
HEALTHCARE
With the advent of Big Data Analytics, many areas of healthcare which were
developed and proved as scientific theories decades ago are now being put
into practice, say Founding Members of Cittabase Solutions, in an interview with
Elets News Network (ENN).
How business intelligence and
big data solutions are rele-
vant to the Indian healthcare
system? How can these tech-
nology solutions improve health
delivery in India?
The healthcare enterprises in India
have abundant data – data that de-
pict their experience and data that
hold the key for many of their prob-
lems. But more often than not, we find
Indian healthcare enterprises so far
have not attempted to dig deeper and
MURALI PALLIKARA
President
Cittabase Solutions
34 JANUARY / 2017
ehealth.eletsonline.com
unravel their data to their advantage,
simply because of the sheer volume
and disparateness. With the advent
of Big Data Analytics, many areas of
healthcare which were developed and
proved as scientific theories decades
ago are now being put into practice.
For instance, for the research fra-
ternity, a Business Intelligence (BI)
or a Big Data Analytics implementa-
tion is a great boon in making areas
such as personalised medicine a re-
ality. These were areas which were
thought upon as not commercially
viable before the advent of BI and Big
Data Analytics. Cognitive computing
systems can collect and auto-ana-
lyse vital sign readings generated
by the various medical instruments
and wearable devices for patients in
ICU and provide intuitive alerts to
care-givers on their mobile devices
for the timely intervention thereby
ensuring better clinical outcome.
What are the key benefits
Indian healthcare providers
draw from implementation of
business intelligence and ana-
lytics?
The current state of Indian health-
care industry is data-rich and in-
formation-poor. The primary goal
of a Business Intelligence system
implementation is to take charge of
their data and convert it into more
meaningful information and insights
that lead to strategic and timely de-
cisions. Thus, it enables healthcare
enterprise administrators to control
and cut-down costs by improving op-
erational efficiency without compro-
mising quality of care and outcome.
Secondly, by integrating clinical and
financial data and by making them
available side-by-side for analysis,
the clinicians and administrators
have the ability to assess the efficacy
of the diagnosis and treatment pro-
cess and compare them against their
alternatives. Thirdly, to keep up the
satisfaction levels of a modern day
patient who is more knowledgeable
and demanding than ever before, BI
systems can provide the transparen-
cy and accountability that they seek.
In a global context, where India
is fast becoming a medical tourism
destination of choice, to sustain and
succeed in global competition, it is
imperative for the Indian healthcare
enterprises to periodically analyse
the public sentiments. Big Data An-
alytics is a great new way to collate
and integrate data available in the
public domain such as social media,
health forums, etc, and integrate it
with their in-house data to meas-
ure and monitor their performance
against patient satisfaction and sen-
timents. This will help to improve and
maintain their standards according
to the global patient’s expectation
and requirements.
 Corporate Interview

What does a hospital need to

implement such solutions?
Unlike a decade or so ago, when
healthcare analytics had just started
to blossom in the developed econo-
mies, today it has become a lot more
easier and cheaper to implement a BI
or an Analytics solution. Over the last
decade, the technologies have con-
verged, many BI use-cases have been
tested and ROI has been established.
All these factors put together meant
faster rollout, less expensive, low risk
and highly agile enterprise-scale BI
solution. We strongly recommend our
clients to embark on BI solutions on
a phased and foundational approach
rather than a big bang one-time roll-
out of a mega BI solution. A team of
experts comprising of healthcare
business domain specialists and BI
and Analytics technical specialists
are critical for the implementation
of a BI system. Besides that, it is the
management will and support to im-
plement a BI system and make it as
the enterprise’s single-version-of-
truth data repository is the most im- Unlike a decade or so ago, when healthcare
portant need. analytics had just started to blossom in the
Please tell us what Cittabase developed economies, today it has become a lot
is all about and also your key more easier and cheaper to implement a BI or an
solutions designed for health
Analytics solution
institutions in India. and oncolytics - intended for a cancer
Cittabase is a BI and Analytics centre.
company. Cittabase specialises in
Healthcare Analytics space. We have How do you see your solutions
successfully implemented multiple making an impact in govern-
Healthcare BI Solutions. These BI ment run institutions in India?
solutions have been designed to inte- We have been working with public
grate disparate, heterogeneous data hospitals in ASEAN countries and we
into a single repository and present have a greater understanding of the
the gist of the data to the senior ex- challenges faced by government-run
ecutives by means of dashboards institutions. The solutions we provide
and reports. Putting all that solid can make significant impact in pop-
experience into, Cittabase has come ulation health and wellness, infec-
out with a Packaged Healthcare An- tious disease outbreak surveillance
alytics Solution, Lifeline Analytics, and control, cut down administrative
intended for a healthcare institution costs, ability to effectively utilise
of any size, which makes a successful scarce healthcare resource time to
BI system implementation from the match demand and supply, etc.
ground-up, quick and easy. We have a
ANDREW JOSEPH couple of other speciality centre spe- What are your future plans for
Chief Product Officer cific products, diabetes care – intend- India?
Cittabase Solutions ed for a diabetes speciality centre Cittabase is based out of Chennai

JANUARY / 2017
ehealth.eletsonline.com 35
 Corporate Interview

where it has its product R&D Centre

and a support centre to exclusively
serve our Indian clients. We plan to
expand our R&D team this year and
also we are planning to open offices
in other cities (Mumbai, Delhi, Hyder-
abad and Vadodara) to stay close to
our clients.

Sharing of clinical and patient

data in India is a big chal-
lenge. How can this situation
be improved? What steps are
being taken by the government
and other key stakeholders to
address this issue?
Challenges faced by the industry in
data sharing today by and large fall
in two categories – operational and
technical grounds and legal and eth-
ical grounds. To improve technical
and operational challenges of data
sharing, the three most crucial things
to keep in view are adherence to in-
ternational data or code standards,
infrastructural readiness and com-
mitment from top management. Most
of these challenges are intra-hospital
or inter-hospital challenges and they
can be addressed by the organisa-
tion’s internal teams. The Ministry
of Health and Family Welfare has
come up with EHR standards for In- dia which is a wonderful initiative. growth, acquisition and consolida-
Healthcare institutions can adapt to tion, etc. Small and Medium hospi-
these standards at least to enable tals are still skeptical about analytics
them to share data as and when they and Business Intelligence. New and
need. emerging hospitals, which are highly
The challenges in data shar- techno-friendly, are keen to invest on
ing that surround ethical and legal IT-based solutions and taking steps in
grounds are a bit more complex as the right direction.
they involve personal data protec-
tion. This is where government’s par- How healthcare ICT innova-
ticipation and involvement becomes
tions are evolving in the Indian
crucial in making legislations to fully
context?
protect patient data and making sure
The common concern in Indian
that it is enforced properly.
Healthcare is the gap between the
healthcare facilities available in ur-
How are Indian healthcare pro-
ban and rural community due to the
viders currently placed in terms civil infrastructural shortfalls. Most
of adopting IT-based solutions of the ICT innovations in India at
to improve efficiencies? present are to close this gap using
Some of our large Indian clients are latest ICT and make those facilities
up there with their international accessible to the remote rural India.
counterparts in adopting IT-based Mobile Real-Time Analytics has com-
ANANTH THYAGARAJAN solutions to improve efficiency and pletely changed the way diagnostic
Chief Executive Officer patient care. However there are and therapeutic procedures are used
Cittabase Solutions challenges due to their phenomenal by clinicians.

36 JANUARY / 2017
ehealth.eletsonline.com
 Corporate Interview

JANUARY / 2017
ehealth.eletsonline.com 37
 Newsmakers of 2016

Simplifying
CARDIAC CARE
for All By developing a credit card sized portable ECG
monitor which can generate sharable reports on a
smartphone within seconds, Noida-based Agatsa
Software Pvt Ltd has taken cardiac monitoring to a
whole new level. Neha Rastogi, Co-founder of Agatsa,
in an interview with Elets News Network (ENN), talks
about the company’s achievements and future plans
to bring in further innovations and disruptions in the
Indian healthcare sector for common people.

to detect, diagnose and manage car- of population to move towards un-

What is the vision guiding
Agatsa? Please share with us
how the company came into
existence?
Agatsa is focused on becoming a pi-
oneer in cardiac care wherein we
promise easiest and quickest method
diac problems. Unlike other health
problems, time is of great importance
when it comes to cardiac issues. A
small delay can lead to surgery or
even death.
The idea to start Agatsa was con-
ceived when we saw members of our
family and dear ones being detected
with heart diseases. There was no
mechanism to detect a problem like a
heart attack in a timely manner, ex-
cept to go to a diagnostic centre for
an ECG.
ECG is the first test being done to
detect a possible heart problem. But
conventional methods of ECG are
costly, time consuming and tedious.
We thought of the idea of having
a portable and easy to use ECG
monitor which can be connected to
a smartphone, quickly take ECG,
share report to a doctor and get a
quick diagnosis, and hence save
crucial time. We started working on
developing a prototype of such device
and named it SANKET which means
signal in Hindi.
How important is cardiac care
in Indian context?
In a developing country like India,
high economic growth and urbani-
sation have caused a large section
healthy lifestyles with decreased
physical activity, increased stress
levels coupled with high intake of
saturated fats and tobacco. Cardi-
ovascular Diseases (CVDs) are the
largest cause of mortality, resulting
in almost half of all deaths caused by
Non-communicable Diseases (NCDs).
CVDs are expected to be the fastest
growing chronic illnesses, growing at
about 9.2 per cent annually. The rate
of CVDs among Indians, particularly
young men, is almost twice as high
as their Western counterparts. Young
population is increasingly falling
prey to these deadly diseases.
What is Sanket and how does it
measure stress?
Sanket is a credit card sized ECG
monitoring device which measures
12-lead ECGs without any leads or
wires or electrodes. You just have to
place your thumb on sensors or place
the device with sensor touching at
different positions of chest leads to
measure accurate ECG in just 15 sec-
onds on a smartphone. The report is
generated and shared via mobile with
a doctor for quick review.
The report contains not just the
ECG graph but also various heart
parameters like heart rate, QTc in-

38 JANUARY / 2017
ehealth.eletsonline.com

tervals, R-R intervals, etc. With the
heart rate and R-R intervals, we have
developed our algorithms to calculate
heart rate variability, which predicts
up to 17 diseases and also the clini-
cal stress levels of an individual when
compared to his resting R-R interval.
This is being used now in various
researches to develop a correlation
between mental stress and cardiac
problems.
Any person can purchase and use
this device easily at home, record his
ECG and share the report to doctor or
family. Plus, we have also rolled our
unique ECG interpretation services
where any ECG report can be upload-
ed on our platform and shared and
can be interpreted by our panel of ex-
perienced cardiac medical practition-
ers. Hence, now only in five seconds
any ECG lead position can be traced
out and analysed for diseases like
MI, AF. This gives a tremendous ad-
vantage to general practitioners, who
can take a data driven conclusive call
on patient management.
General practitioners are the first
point of contact in most cardiac cas-
es, but at present they either don’t
have ECG machines, or they cannot
interpret complex conditions using
ECG. Our platform provides them
both in a very cost effective manner.
Using heart rate variability, we
can even predict the vulnerability of
an individual for 17 possible diseas-
es. We call this Stress Analysis and
this has been used very effectively in
various NGOs. Several IITs are using
our platform to further enhance their
research work on relating mental and
cardiac problems through relevant
data.
Having developed devices
like Sanket ECG monitor and
Stress Smartapp that measures
ECG and stress, which other
products Agatsa Healthcare is
planning in near future?
Cardiac care mainly comprises of
three stages – prevention, detection
and maintenance. We look forward
to launch complete end-to-end solu-
tions to provide a unique combina-
tion of pocket sized ECG monitor to
quickly detect heart issues through
We successfully
kicked off our pilot
project under the
National Health
Mission programme of
Tripura in association
with Tata Trusts in
September last year.
Doctors in 45 PHCs
in remote areas are
successfully using
our devices to quickly
scan patients for
cardiac problems
full 12-Lead ECG on a smartphone,
get timely medical interventions and
assistance and services to provide
personalised coaching programmes
to post operative patients by bringing
together cardiac healthcare provid-
ers, dieticians and physical thera-
pists.
We are gearing up to Beta launch
our extended cardiac health platform
called “Sanket Coach Programme.”
This programme is of three months
to six months duration and will pro-
vide support to heart patients (dis-
eased or post operative) by helping
them with right food choices, lifestyle
modifications, physical exercise and
online medical support.
How Agatsa plans to scale
up?
Our Sanket devices are in the market
for the past one year now and are
receiving some really good feedback
from heart patients, doctors, general
physicians, diabetologists and gener-
al fitness providers. Even the people
who just want to monitor their heart
for prevention of any disease are
buying Sanket. Anyone can purchase
Sanket from our website or online
portals like Amazon, Snapdeal and
Flipkart.
We successfully kicked off our pi-
Newsmakers of 2016
lot project under the National Health
Mission programme of Tripura in as-
sociation with Tata Trusts in Septem-
ber last year. Doctors in 45 PHCs in
remote areas are successfully using
our devices to quickly scan patients
for cardiac problems.
We plan to scale up the sales of our
devices and Sanket services platform
in the first quarter of 2017 by reach-
ing out to various hospitals, cardiac
clinics, diagnostic centres to use and
recommend our devices and Sanket
Life platform to their patients for
better monitoring and management
of heart diseases. Agatsa intends to
reach out to post operative patients
who are in dire need of constant
support and monitoring, patients on
medication and finally to high risk
patients.
What are the key challenges
you face as a health device
maker?
Key challenges in India include lack
of standard certifications and regula-
tions around patient-centric medical
devices. Shortage of technical exper-
tise in terms of electronics manufac-
turing and prototyping is another big
challenge for device manufacturers
in India. Finding high skilled profes-
sionals in designing and engineering
areas is also tough. Support from ac-
ademia to guide young students and
professionals towards real innova-
tions must be stressed upon.
How can government policies
help medical device manufac-
turers to increase their global
reach?
Regulations around patient-centric
medical devices like Sanket must be
brought in for better innovations,
products and services in healthcare.
Commercialisation grants or even
debt on low interest rates to scale up
and not just support for research and
development would help startups like
us to stand on their own, rather than
depending on equity investments
alone.
Better infrastructure support for
R&D and prototyping and manufac-
turing will be a huge boost to Indian
medical devices industry.
JANUARY / 2017
ehealth.eletsonline.com 39
 Outlook 2017

BIG PLANS
ON THE

ANVIL
The year 2017 is set to herald a new growth phase in the
Indian healthcare sector. Riding on the back of innovation,
disruptive approach and strategic tie-ups to take on multitude
of challenges, the health industry is expected to remain on the
growth trajectory. Elets News Network (ENN) speaks to the
industry to know about their future plans and the policy
changes they expect the government to effect in order
to realise their potential.

40 JANUARY / 2017
ehealth.eletsonline.com

NIPUN GOYAL, Co-founder, Curofy
Future plans for 2017
We will keep improving our core offering to the
doctors and help them in all aspects of their prac-
tice including knowledge, reputation, finance and
resources. We would also like to increase and im-
prove the quality and quantity of our case repos-
itory, which can used later to develop automation
tools with predictive diagnosis to help doctors take
faster and accurate clinical decisions.
We will first conquer the Indian market first and
then go to other markets. We have already started
running pilots in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon,
and Nigeria etc. We plan to have 1 million doctors
on the app in next 2 years.
We want to lead the way in making healthcare mar-
keting efficient by building products which can be
used by various stakeholders in the industry to
reach out to doctors.
Policy decisions you want to see
taken in 2017
The industry does not give enough freedom to ex-
press oneself and that’s where innovative thinking
takes precedence. General association of health-
care industries is with the government and the gov-
ernment levies a lot of rules and regulations. The
policies are mostly unclear which creates a lot of
confusion in the workspace. Some doctors might
also find it unsafe to join in with the industry due
to the similar reasons. Though the Prime Minister
announced some welcoming initiatives, now it will
be important to see the successful implementation
of those announcements.
Thoughts on eHealth
World is moving towards digital technologies and
so is healthcare sector. With eHealth there is sig-
nificant potential to improve healthcare decision
making, enhance health management, and produce
better patient outcomes.
Outlook 2017
HUZAIFA SHEHABI, Chief Operating Officer at
Saifee Hospital
Future plans for 2017
Our future plans would be to further climb the
spiral ladder on various aspects -- be it clinical or
supportive services -- towards making our hospital
better equipped for gravely ill patients.
To make efforts to conserve power and other re-
sources to decrease our carbon footprint.
We also believe in continuously imparting training
of different modules to our staff like enhancing
their leadership skills, team building etc. which has
helped our organisation design and implement to-
wards bringing a positive change.
Policy decisions you want to see
taken in 2017
Healthcare is a labour intensive sector where good
trained labour is very much important. Some very
dynamic reforms and better designed labour reg-
ulations need to be introduced by the government
which will help in boosting this sector rather than
being governed by the age old labour laws.
Thoughts on eHealth
e-health is an emerging field in the intersection of
medical informatics, public health and business,
referring to health services and information deliv-
ered or enhanced through the Internet and related
technologies.
JANUARY / 2017
ehealth.eletsonline.com 41
 Outlook 2017
ANTONY JACOB, CEO, Apollo Munich
Future plans for 2017
With some great innovations, use of technology to en-
hance customer experience, growing acceptance and
recent economic changes, we are expecting a huge up-
heaval for health insurance industry in 2017. At Apollo
Munich, we will continue to adopt innovative technolo-
gies to simplify and enhance the customer experience
while buying and using their health insurance policies.
In terms of products, the insurance industry is on an in-
novation drive to address diverse and changing needs
of the customers. We are working towards developing
more innovative products that cater to the primary and
tertiary healthcare financing needs of people. There
NARENDRA NANDEKAR, Founder and CEO of
WOCCOT
Broad Structure of the Organisation
Interface Infosoft solutions.P.Ltd is a software product &
software services company. The company has a market-
ing head and a technical head. There are other functional
verticals like software development, testing, HR & finance.
The overall functioning of the company is looked after by
the CEO.
Future plans for 2017
The platform shall be used to deploy three-four solutions
42 JANUARY / 2017
ehealth.eletsonline.com
will be product innovation around high frequency-low
ticket products for small illnesses and low-frequen-
cy-high impact comprehensive products for terminal
illnesses. Customized products, disease-specific prod-
ucts, micro-insurance products and life-stage products
are also on the anvil.
Policy decisions you want to see taken
in 2017
In terms of economic growth and development, a devel-
oping country like ours, should be able to provide basic
healthcare access to its citizens.
Amongst many other progressive initiatives, the
launch of a universal health insurance scheme is ex-
pected to take place in 2017. Implementing the ‘Health
Insurance for all’ policy will help to make quality
healthcare affordable for all.
Further, as health insurance is the best financial
tool to mitigate ever rising healthcare costs, we hope
to see a push towards lowering the service tax levied
currently on health insurance, for deeper penetration
and growth of this sector.
We also hope that the government helps to gen-
erate additional resources in order to improve the
healthcare infrastructure and thus raise the number
of healthcare facilities across the country, especially in
the smaller cities.
in domains like healthcare, pharmaceuticals and manu-
facturing. The platform shall be scaled, made capable and
matured. We expect revenue streams to start from 2-3 of
our deployments.
Policy decisions you want to see taken in
2017
All the healthcare organisations should come under com-
pliance and accreditation regime. This shall ensure better
and uniform out comes.
Most of the digital healthcare solutions tend to be da-
ta-heavy. The cost of data transmission and reception
should come down from $3.7/GB to $1/GB. This in line
with Prime Minister’s digital India initiative. Also funding
should be done to upgrade digital infrastructure so that
the current average broad-band speed of 3.5 mbps is at
least doubled in next two years.

AMOL NAIKAWADI, Joint Managing Director, In-
dus Health Plus
Future plans for 2017
This year, Indus will be offering multiple preventive
and wellness solutions which will be focused not only
on individuals but their families too. As the age for get-
ting the lifestyle diseases is coming down rapidly, Indus
has taken this cognizance and thus we are planning to
come up with more advanced checkup solutions.
We will be creating multiple preventive and well-
ness solutions which will be economical and suitable
for families of all age groups. Moreover, we will also be
launching finance options to cater to the needs of fam-
ilies and make prevention accessible and affordable to
all. Like packages pertaining to different age groups,
our focus will also be on offering packages for different
life stages. We will also be partnering with few Insur-
ance companies to expand the service offerings.
For our existing customers, we are creating a cul-
ture of prevention by creating lot of awareness in their
minds so that they opt for health checkup on an annual
basis. Since, we generate Electronic Health Records
(EHRs) we have their family history, by which we will
be coming up with customised preventive healthcare
solutions for them.
Along with the above, we are continuously expand-
ing our presence in tier II and tier III cities to create
awareness about timely preventive healthcare. With
Outlook 2017
this, our focus will be on corporate health checkups,
wherein we are already getting good response from
various organisations pertaining to various industry
verticals.
Keeping in sync with technological advancements,
we attempt to offer a wide range of high-end, world
class, comprehensive preventive and wellness solu-
tions; which would be launched in the coming year.
Through the new packages, we are creating a culture of
prevention and are giving opportunity to help more and
more families to get benefitted with regular prevention.
Policy decisions you want to see taken
in 2017
We recommend that tax exemption should increase up
to Rs. 20,000, so that more people can avail preven-
tive health checkups and remain healthy by reducing
health burden due to diabetes, cardiac and cancer dis-
eases. The tax exemption of Rs 5,000 is a negligible
amount when considered for an entire family of the
assesse.
Infrastructure status for the healthcare industry is
a long pending demand and should be given priority
by the government in the new budget.
Specific tax benefits should be given to corporates
only for preventive healthcare, so that they can invest
in their employees’ health and wellbeing.
The way healthcare services are enjoying exemp-
tions in service tax, same should continue in the pro-
posed GST. Since the tax rate is expected in the range
of 18%, it will hugely impact the cost of healthcare of
the common man.
Thoughts on eHealth
eHealth is one of the must have magazines in health-
care industry. The magazine is a credible source of
healthcare, business news and information and focus-
es on providing medical information through digital
platform, so it will go a long way. It delivers both na-
tional and regional news about the industry which is
beneficial for us
JANUARY / 2017
ehealth.eletsonline.com 43
 Newsmakers of 2016

Making Quality
Healthcare
AFFORDABLE
Having prime focus on making the quality healthcare affordable
without compromising on any parameters, Zydus Hospitals believes in
clinical outcomes and patient satisfaction beyond accreditation, says
Dr Sajan Nair, Group COO, Zydus Hospitals & Healthcare Research Pvt
Ltd, in an interview with Elets News Network (ENN).

What are the opportunities

you are looking at in terms of
delivering quality healthcare in
India?
Within a short span of 18 months of
commissioning, Zydus Hospital is
already accredited and certified for
cGreen OT, NABH and NABL for the
quality process and protocols imple-
mented.
It was a very proud moment for
us when we recently got accredited
with NABH certification for emer-
gency medicine services -- the first
hospital in Gujarat and fourth in the
country to have achieved this feat.
Regarding the accreditation, we
are moving ahead for CAP in labo-
ratory services, NABH for radiology,
blood bank and nursing excellence.
By December 2017 we hope to be JCI
accredited.
As for the quality of services deliv-
ered, our vision is clinical outcomes
and patient satisfaction beyond ac-
creditation.
We are committed to delivering
standard clinical & nursing services /
process including care plan pathways
with strong focus on regular internal/
external quality programs. Howev-
er our prime mission is to make the
quality healthcare affordable without
compromising on any parameters.
Our staunch belief of having trans-

44
46 JANUARY / 2017
ehealth.eletsonline.com

parency in billing services and the
various walk in/walk out packages
has resulted in huge patient satisfac-
tion as also the non-differential policy
regarding the same.
Further, a system of checks and
balances has been put in place for
each of the non-medical services pro-
vided including housekeeping, food,
etc. This keeps the patient and his
attendant happy and satisfied
Please share with us your short-
term and long-term expansion
plans? What do you propose to
achieve in 2017?
Zydus Hospital is coming up with full-
fledged radiation centre and oncolo-
gy unit with the latest technology and
full-time consultants in collaboration
with a very reputed oncology institute
of US/Europe. The treatment proto-
cols will be as per the standards rec-
ommended and practiced.
Presently we have a 550 bedded
hospital in Ahmedabad & a 180 bed-
ded hospital in Anand. Our Plan is to
have a presence in all the five major
cities of Gujarat with small outreach
clinics across the state.
What are the key health servic-
es you offer and how do you
plan to expand them?
We are focusing on high-end tertiary
care especially in areas of neuro, car-
diac, renal, gastro, orthopedics and
critical care.
Regarding expansion, we have
plans to tie up with like-minded hospi-
tals in tier two and three cities across
the state and in Africa. We hope to
help them in getting good clinical out-
comes by our team of experts through
network connectivity using teleradi-
ology and telemedicine. In addition to
that the presence of outreach clinics
will play a major role in meeting the
unmet needs
How are you leveraging ICT to
improve efficiency of the hospi-
tal? Which key initiatives have
you initiated in this regard?
We have been extensively using
ICT for data capturing and analysis
across all segments including medi-
Newsmakers of 2016
KEY ACCOMPLISHMENTS SO FAR
1. cGreen OT, NABH and NABL accreditions in 18 months of operations
2. NABH certification for emergency services 1st in Gujarat and 4th in
India.
3. Transparency in billing services and the various walk in/walk out
packages
4. Coming up with full-fledged radiation centre and oncology unit with
latest technology in partnership with reputed oncology institute of
US/Europe
5. Plans to set up five hospitals -- five in major cities of Gujarat
6. Plans to tie up with like-minded hospitals in tier-II and III cities across
India and in Africa
7. Zydus has executed 214 community-based educational
programmes as part of its CSR initiative
8. Robust medical tourism programme for foreigners and NRIs who
want quality treatment at the right cost
We have plans to tie up with like-minded hospitals
in tier two and three cities across the state and in
Africa. We hope to help them in getting good clinical
outcomes by our team of experts through network
connectivity using teleradiology and telemedicine.
cal and nursing. checkup and safety masks for pre-
Our mobile application makes it vention.
easy for people to reach out and we Programmes with chief ministers’
would soon be integrating the details office for healthy living of girl stu-
to be made available for the patient dents studying in municipal schools
on one click across the net. are just some of the few initiatives
Going forward within three to four undertaken.
years, we are looking to be at Stage
7 of the Asia pacific EMRAM score How is Zydus Hospitals promot-
as per the reference of HIMMS Ana- ing health tourism in India?
lytics. We are looking at Africa as a country
and also the segment of non- resident
Please tell us about the CSR Indians across the globe especially
initiatives you have undertaken the NRGs who are looking at quality
recently. treatment at the right cost.
Zydus Hospital is working with the We work on a system of complete
communities for promotion of good end-to-end package. No surprises for
health through educational pro- the patient travelling into a foreign
grammes – both inside and outside country for treatment. Once they are
the hospital. As of now, we have done in the city it’s the responsibility of the
almost 214 community based educa- hospital to take care of receiving to
tional programmes. departure of the patient and his at-
Specific programmes are done tendants.
regularly keeping in mind the target It’s important that they go back
audience like pollution and its effects with happy memories of the city and
with the traffic police where each and more important the country which is
every policemen was given a health foremost.
JANUARY / 2017
ehealth.eletsonline.com 45
47
 Newsmakers of 2016

FLAG BEARERS
of Excellence in
Healthcare
With passion for making people better,
Columbia Asia Hospital has been redefining
quality healthcare in India based on strong
foundation of benchmarked protocols and
practice, state-of-the-art technology and
infrastructure supported by well trained staff
and high ethical standards. Dr Nandakumar
Jairam, GMD & Chairman, Columbia Asia
Hospitals, in an interview with Elets News
Network (ENN), gives valuable insights into
the values that separate the group from
other healthcare providers.

What drives Columbia Asia
Hospital’s vision and growth in
India?
Our organisational focus on patient
care, people development and innova-
tion makes us one of the flag bearers
of clinical and service excellence in
healthcare.
At Columbia Asia Hospitals, pa-
tients are the centre of everyone’s at-
tention and care. Looking after their
condition, convenience and comfort is
the highest priority. The look and feel
of Columbia Asia Hospitals is charac-
teristic and unique in architecture and
design. The expertise and competence
of our consultants, paramedics and
staff forms the essence of the brand.
Some of the key differentiators in-
clude flat pricing for procedures and
digitised patients records. The brand
is today synonymous with:
● High quality clinical care and
outcomes
● Benchmarked protocols and
practice
● State-of-the-art technology & in-
frastructure
● High standards of infection control
& hygiene
● Personalised service provided by
well trained staff
● Ethical standards
● Excellent value
Our vision: To have a passion for
making people better.
Our values include:
CUSTOMER FIRST - Anticipating
customer needs and exceeding their
expectations
EXCELLENCE - Delivering the high-
est standard of patient care.
TEAMWORK - Working together
with mutual respect towards a com-
mon goal.
INTEGRITY - Honesty and a com-
mitment to always doing the right
thing.
CARING - Nurturing a culture of car-
ing for our patients, their families,
and each other.
COMMUNITY - Sharing and being
involved in the life of the communities
we serve.
How is Columbia Asia differ-
ent from other super-specialty
hospitals that have come up
across the country in recent
years?
At Columbia Asia, comprehensive
medical programmes demand ethics,
excellence and strict clinical govern-
ance. All of our operations follow in-
ternational quality assurance guide-
lines that meet the highest standard
of patient care. These, combined with
a transparent pricing structure, are
the fundamental pillars in the prac-
tice of evidence based healthcare at
Columbia Asia.
The clinical programme at our
hospitals has evolved over the years
based on the changing need of the
community. We have added super spe-
cializations like Liver Transplanta-
tion, Bone Marrow Transplantation,

46 JANUARY / 2017
ehealth.eletsonline.com

Deep Brain Stimulation, High-end
Urology, High-end Neurosurgical pro-
cedures, Interventional Cardiology,
Cardiac surgery, Bariatric Surgery,
IVF, and others. We have established
centres of excellence (CoE) around
specialties like kidney transplant,
gastric and liver diseases and ortho-
pedics, to name a few. The core ele-
ments that go into a CoE include en-
gaging the patient by educating him
or her better about the disease con-
dition, an integrated care approach
and driving excellence in patient care
while objectively measuring the qual-
ity of our efforts and outcomes.
We have standardised clinical ter-
minologies through the adoption of
SNOMED CT for all the procedures
and also the adoption of ICD 10 for
diagnoses. Using standard terminol-
ogies allows us to practice evidence
based medicine by comparing the
treatment given to patients for the
same diagnoses or procedure and
ensuring that the treatment is stand-
ardised and audited by collating and
comparing records for patients with
similar diagnoses.
All the employees are extensively
trained in our 3C brand standards.
These are experiential standards
which enhance the customer jour-
ney through each of the touch points.
All the employees are encouraged to
live upto the 3C standards. Each cus-
tomer is different and understanding
them is an art. Customer profiling
together with anticipating their emi-
nent and hidden needs to exceed ex-
pectations are our tools in doing so.
The employees are trained to be com-
petent, warm, friendly and passion-
ate about what they do and have the
spirit to serve. When you meet a Co-
lumbia Asian, you’ll be greeted with a
smile and a warm sense of pride.
Columbia Asia continuously en-
courages innovation.
● Multidisciplinary team meetings
to understand a medical situation
to evaluate and finalize the opti-
mal way in which the patient can
be handled.
● Using technology as an enabler
to drive better patient experience
and outcomes e.g. tele radiology
and telemedicine, consultant and
Columbia Asia has been
successfully running a
10-bed hospital that has
recently been scaled
up to 30 patient beds,
for the last five years in
Doddaballapur, a rural
area adjoining Bangalore
patient applications, self-help ki-
osks, etc.
● Continuous exposure to manag-
ers to adopt best practices in the
industry through well planned
training programs (in-house and
external)
● Encouraging innovation by having
informal sessions with employees
and recognizing and pushing them
to innovate.
● Learning from other industries –
The Company encourages indus-
try experts from non-healthcare
settings to engage and share their
experiences as well as practices.
The company also hires from oth-
er industries. This allows them to
gain valuable inputs for improving
existing processes.
Please brief us about the
healthcare services being of-
fered by Columbia Asia.
Columbia Asia hospitals aim to be
the preferred choice of healthcare
services for families and businesses.
With around 100 beds per medical fa-
cility for the multi-specialty hospitals
and around 200 beds in the referral
hospitals, the buildings showcase
smooth patient flow and new medical
technologies to decrease the levels of
invasive treatments; the efficiency of
patient care is optimized resulting in
a shorter length of stay and hence re-
duced costs and better affordability
for patients. As progressive as med-
ical technology may be, the differen-
tiation in healthcare relies much on
the people delivering the care – high-
ly skilled medical consultants, caring
Newsmakers of 2016
nurses as well as teams of committed
staff who see to every patient’s needs.
The multi-specialty hospitals of
Columbia Asia provide a wide array
of medical services such as general
surgery, interventional cardiology,
pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology,
orthopedics and internal medicine.
The referral hospital provides com-
prehensive tertiary care and high end
services in multiple specialties like
interventional and surgical cardiology,
liver transplant, bone marrow trans-
plant, etc. These are supported by a
comprehensive list of ancillary servic-
es that include an intensive care unit,
neonatal care unit, physiotherapy, lab-
oratory, pharmacy and imaging.
With rural-urban gap in tertiary
care a major concern in India
why most tertiary care hospitals
are located in urban areas?
What are the key challenges for
private hospitals to set up base
in rural areas of the country?
Lack of trained manpower and avail-
ability of the desired infrastructure
and ability to pay for services are the
major challenges that come in the
way of setting up tertiary care hospi-
tals in rural areas.
However, Columbia Asia has been
successfully running a 10 bed hospi-
tal that has recently been scaled up to
30 patient beds, for the last five years
in Doddaballapur, a rural area adjoin-
ing Bangalore.
Similarly, we have been success-
fully running 100-bed hospitals in
Tier-II towns like Patiala, Mysore and
Ghaziabad. All these hospitals now
offer high end-services like interven-
tional cardiology, renal transplants,
joint replacements, and so on. In fact
our Patiala hospital runs the only
transplant centre in entire Malwa re-
gion of Punjab.
Please share with us your future
expansion plans.
We plan to commission our upcoming
206-bed hospital in Sarjapur, Banga-
lore during the fourth quarter of the
2017. This will be our fifth hospital
in the Bangalore cluster. We plan to
expand in the Pune area as well
shortly.
JANUARY / 2017
ehealth.eletsonline.com 47
 Sahara Hospital:
ENSURING QUALITY
& AFFORDABLE CARE
Established with a clear vision of making quality care affordable for common man,
Sahara Hospital in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh is a shining example of how hospitals can
bridge the gap between quality health care and affordability, jointly say
Anil Vikram Singh, Senior Advisor, Sahara India Pariwar (Sahara Hospital) and
Dr Mazhar Husain, Director, Medical Health(Chief Neurosurgen), Sahara Hospital, in
an interview with Arpit Gupta of Elets News Network (ENN).

standards of patient care. We always our specialist tool and adding more
ensure that the treatment is correct facilities to the hospital like radiation
and affordable for the patient. oncology, etc.

Common man has this per-

ANIL VIKRAM SINGH
Senior Advisor, Sahara India
Pariwar (Sahara Hospital)
What is the vision behind Sahara
Hospital?
It is the vision of our Managing Work-
er and Chairman Saharasri Subrata
Roy. He realised that good hospitals
should be provided to the common
man where they can receive proper
treatment. People used to go to Delhi
and Mumbai for treatment. He was
clear in his vision that he didn’t want
to make it a profit making business.
In fact, he wanted to give something
back to the society. It was decided
that WHATEVER profit is made it
would be used to expand the hospi-
tal and its facilities. We have set new
ception that private hospitals
tend to overcharge them. How
Sahara is trying to break this
myth?
We organise camps and set up OPDs
in nearby cities. Patients from cities
like Kanpur and Allahabad frequent-
ly come to our hospital. We keep send-
ing our doctors to other cities. In col-
laboration with schools and colleges,
we try to raise awareness about the
basic healthcare facilities. There is
no hidden cost for patients at Sahara.
Patient care charges are transparent
and itemised. Our chairman’s vision
and our efforts are to reach poor peo-
ple, create awareness and provide
them better healthcare services. DR. MAZHAR HUSAIN
Director, Medical Health
Do you think we need to pay (chief neurosurgeon)
more attention to emergency Sahara Hospital
care and services?
Definitely, we provide round-the-clock How is Sahara Hospital trans-
emergency services to our patients. forming healthcare in India?
Doctors are available all the time. If Sahara Hospital is transforming
any other specialist is required, they healthcare in India in many ways. It
are made available as a when needed is trying to bridge the gap between
on an urgent basis. quality health care and affordability.
The Sahara Hospital is a NABH-ac-
What is your hospital’s roadmap credited hospital and the department
to improve its services? of Lab Medicine is NABL accredited.
We are in the process of enriching With dedicated, expert and experi-

48
enced doctors around, one is assured
of quality, compassionate care and
the most important – healing touch.
Please tell us about the ser-
vices being offered by Sahara
Hospital.
The hospital provides high quality
and cost effective services, coupled
with the warmth and caring attitude.
Sahara Hospital is the only corpo-
rate tertiary care set up in Eastern
UP. As a multispecialty, tertiary care
destination, the hospital offers inte-
grated quality healthcare with the
availability of all super specialties
and latest generation diagnostic fa-
cilities under one roof. It is compli-
menting the public sector and the
charity hospitals in this region. It is
the only private set up in the region
that performs Kidney Transplant and
Bone Marrow Transplant.
Sahara Hospital provides its ser-
vices in the rural areas also through
various health care camp activities
and mobile dispensaries which cater
to rural areas in Uttar Pradesh, Bi-
har, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and
Nepal.
Sahara Hospital is currently op-
erating with 53 specialties, 8 support
departments, and a 147-beded criti-
cal care unit. The hospital has all the
diagnostic services available round
the clock. This includes Radiology,
Lab Medicine, Endoscopy, and special
diagnostic services,-all located under
one roof. This also includes 4D Ultra-
sound, latest generation Cardiac CT,
MRI, a Cardiac Cath Lab.
What were your key achieve-
ments in 2016?
The key achievements of the year
2016 are:
● Received award for the Best Mul-
tispecialty hospital in the non met-
ro category from ICICI Lombard
and CNBC Awaaz 18
● Successfully completed the Sur-
veillance Assessment by NABH
● Successfully completed the Re as-
sessment of Dept. of Lab Medicine
Sahara Hospital is
currently operating with
53 specialties, eight
support departments,
and a 147-beded critical
care unit. The hospital
has all the diagnostic
services available round
the clock
● Received a certificate of merit by
ABP News for Healthcare Destina-
tion
We have been nominated as the best
multispecialty hospital for the follow-
ing awards:
● National quality excellence award
2017 for best multispecialty hospi-
tal in Uttar Pradesh
● Rose of Paracelsus award consti-
tuted by the Arab Medical, Health
Association
● India Risk Management Award,
Season 3 constituted by ICICI
Lombard and CNC TV 18
● DL Shah Quality Award for the
coming year
● World Health and Wellness Con-
gress and Awards 2017
What are your plans for the next
year?
Sahara Hospital’s key plans for the
year 2017 include:
● Commence Radiation Oncology
● To Develop IVF Centre
● Expand Medical Tourism
● Open a Liver Transplant Unit
Which key challenges you see
are creating roadblocks for
improving healthcare delivery
system in India?
The healthcare situation in India
49
 when we look across the country in a
cross-section is of course grim. There
are many challenges that are creat-
ing roadblocks for improving health-
care delivery system in India.
In rural India, there is a lack of
quality infrastructure, dearth of qual-
ified medical functionaries, and ac-
cess to basic medicines and medical
facilities is difficult.
There is lack of education, knowl-
edge and awareness at the grass
roots. The family head is responsible
for all the healthcare related deci-
sions. People are habituated to do-
mestic cures for their ailments and
are very apprehensive about using
medicines. They only visit a doctor
as the last resort after having tried
everything they have been advised by
relatives and neighbours.
There is lack of effective imple-
mentation of government initiatives
at the grassroots level.
How is Sahara Hospital making
tertiary healthcare more inclu-
sive? Please tell us about the
key initiatives the hospital has
taken to deliver quality health-
care to the poor.
Traditionally, the government is the
major provider of healthcare services
for the poor, especially in rural and
semi-urban areas. Charitable trusts
and NGOs have played a complemen-
tary role.
Sahara Hospital is one such hos-
pital that is located in tier II city to
50
Sahara Hospital is
one such hospital
that is located in tier
II city to address the
challenge of health
inequities, improving
healthcare access
and balancing quality
care with affordability.
It is catering to the
population that is
based in whole of UP,
neighbouring areas of
Bihar and Nepal
address the challenge of health ineq-
uities, improving healthcare access
and balancing quality care with af-
fordability. It is catering to the pop-
ulation that is based in whole of UP,
neighboring areas of Bihar, Nepal etc.
It is providing inclusiveness through
proximity and providing quality
healthcare at an affordable cost. It
is a medical destination for people of
Purvanchal.
Sahara Hospital conducts ru-
ral outreach programs that include
camps and village door to door activ-
ities.
The camps organised by Sahara
Hospital on various diseases pro-
vide awareness and education on the
diseases and its control. Also, such
camps provide free of cost investiga-
tions that strongly conveys the mes-
sage of preventive healthcare.
How the hospital is leveraging
new technologies to improve
operational efficiency and
quality of its services?
Sahara Hospital is committed to
leverage on best of technology and
technical knowhow and innovation to
offer every patient best in class ser-
vice. We have best in class medical
equipments that incorporate latest
technology.
The hospital adopts state of the
art technology in all the medical
equipments. Hospital has introduced
Hospital Information System (HIS)
for managing hospital operations in
the most efficient and effective way.
We are gearing up with providing
SMS service for appointments and
Lab Medicine reports even on email.
There already exists a Pneumat-
ic tube system in the department of
Lab medicine. A hospital laboratory
is often a place of intense activity:
countless samples arrive here daily
and are analyzed, evaluated, and the
results passed on, and all of that un-
der enormous time pressure. By us-
ing pneumatic tube systems samples
taken are sent for analysis immedi-
ately, without running time-consum-
ing errands.
Our hospital is also gearing up for
an e-prescription service to replace
the legendary doctor scrawl on hand
written prescriptions. Patient histo-
ries, diagnostic reports, discharge
summaries and other vital informa-
tion regarding an existing patient
will all be digitally stored so they can
be accessed remotely by the patient
as well as by any of the Consultant of
our hospital (with informed patient
consent). Once this all comes togeth-
er, it will be a useful tool in emergen-
cy situations where speed is of the
essence. Sahara Hospital takes pride
in sharing one of the patients obser-
vation “Best can not be, Bettered
more.”
4 POWER
PACKED
MAGAZINES

51
 Newsmakers of 2016

Taking
Healthcare to the
NEXT LEVEL
Medics Super Speciality Hospital
has made it its mission to raise the
quality of healthcare in Uttar Pradesh
to a whole new level, riding on the
back of two and a half decades of
experience in delivering genuine and
reliable healthcare services.
Dr Mayank Somani, CEO, Medics
Super Speciality Hospital, in an
interview with Elets News Network
(ENN), speaks about the vision,
differentiating factors and the
hospital’s unique approach
to provide a patient friendly
environment in the upcoming 300-
bed super speciality tertiary care
hospital in Lucknow.

What will differentiate Medics Super

Speciality Hospital from other health-
care providers in Lucknow?
Medics Super Speciality Hospital is a state-of
the- art 300-bed super speciality tertiary care
hospital, the first in the city and the whole of
central and eastern UP. The combination of
latest infrastructure and cutting-edge technol-
ogy adds value to the elite doctors and man-
agement team of medics. Readily available
medical services in all specialties and super
specialties under one roof is a remarkable dif-
ferentiator in the whole of North India.

52 JANUARY / 2017
ehealth.eletsonline.com
 Newsmakers of 2016

Please brief us about the medi-

cal facilities at the hospital.
Medics is here to bring in super Spe-
ciality services. Our centres of excel-
lences are: - Oncology (Medical, Sur-
gical & Radiation) , Gastrosciences,
Neurosciences, Cardiac Sciences,
Orthopaedics, Renal sciences & Crit-
ical care. Besides these centres of
excellence, the hospital will provide
all possible clinical care under one
roof. To support such medical pro-
grammes high end equipments viz. 2
LINAC, 2 Cath Labs, MRI , CT , So-
phisticated pathology lab, PET CT, &
Gamma Camera.
Our high end Critical Care zone has
a capacity of 110 beds, 14 beds NICU
at 3 levels of care. Our infrastructure
has 17 Emergency beds, 18 Dialysis
beds, Endoscopy & Lithotripsy Suites,
VIP Suites & Deluxe Rooms.

The hospital is the first LEED

certified building attaining Gold
Certificate in north India. What
does that mean?
Leadership in Energy and Environ-
mental Design (LEED), is a certi-
fication programme that denotes
how “green”, or compliant in terms
of energy conservation, water us-
age, air quality, and building mate-
rials; a building is over the course
of its construction and thereafter.
LEED certification comes in four lev-
els. LEED - Certified buildings, silver
buildings, gold buildings, and plat-
inum buildings. Green building is a
holistic concept that starts with the
understanding that the built environ-
ment can have profound effects, both
positive and negative, on the natural
environment, as well as the people
who inhabit those building. Green
building is an effort to amplify the pos-
itive and mitigate the negative of these
effects throughout the entire life cycle
of a building. LEED-certified buildings
are resource efficient. They use less
water and energy and reduce green-
house gas emissions. As a bonus, they
save money. The design has been done
by Mr. Manu Malhotra, RSMS.
Uttar Pradesh has a huge popu-
lation of poor people who can-
not afford quality healthcare.
How will Medics Super Spe-
cialty address this challenge?
Is there any plan in place for
treating poor people from the
state?
Yes, there is a clear cut policy decision
at the level of board that none of our
patients will get compromised treat-
ment, owing to their socioeconomic
status. We have tied up with doctors,
pharmaceutical companies and big-
ger NGOs to ensure the same. Many
innovative moves are also planned in
the form of economic wards and cross
subsidy models.
There is a clear cut
policy decision at the
level of board that none
of the sick patients
will get compromised
treatment, just because
of their lower socio-
economic status
Being Uttar Pradesh’s biggest
hospital, Medics Super Special-
ity will also have big challenges
in terms of managing workflow.
How do you see emerging
technologies helping you to
manage such challenges?
Management as per the word is
self-explanatory. What Medics in-
tends to do is seamless management.
The only way that can be achieved
is by having the right team. Medics
has invested immensely in bringing
all healthcare personnel together as
a team. The different teams are not
micromanaged but have been em-
powered to become efficient leaders
of the future. The hospital follows a
horizontal organizational hierarchy
system which gives space for capable
individuals to be the decision makers
where it matters the most. Moreover,
Medics has very strong IT infrastruc-
ture and software, the best in the
healthcare space, to make the pro-
cess and work flow seamlessly. Med-
ics is also a completely Wi-Fi enabled
building which ensures efficient and
smooth work flow transitions.

JANUARY / 2017
ehealth.eletsonline.com 53
 Corporate Interview

INTEGRATING
HEALTHCARE
Solutions to gain
Efficiency
The future belongs to connected healthcare services, says Ramakanth Desai,
CEO, Curespring, a technology company dedicated to provide affordable and
specialised healthcare for patients by integrating work across physicians, diagnostic
labs and specialist doctors, in an interview with Elets News Network (ENN).

How is Curespring impacting

consulting services in the Indian
healthcare sector? How is it
contributing in improving quality
of services?
Indian healthcare sector is highly
fragmented today and very unorgan-
ised. There is no well defined mech-
anism for collaborative patient care,
doctor-to-doctor connectivity, diagnos-
tics chain integration and sharing of
patient information.
With our solutions (doctor-to-doc-
tor collaboration platform, HIS with

Artificial Intelligence,
with its ability to
process data in a
speedy fashion,
will revolutionise
healthcare in the
future. AI-enabled
system as a backup
helps reduce medical
errors and increases
productivity of medical
professionals.

54 JANUARY / 2017
ehealth.eletsonline.com

measures, lab information system,
PACS integrated with the above plat-
forms), we are well placed to help
hospitals and diagnostic labs in de-
veloping and managing some of these
measures. We are also exploring to
do joint studies with some US-based
healthcare consulting firms to bring
best practices from the global arena
to India. For example, there are no
defined ways for measuring physi-
cian productivity, revenue cycle man-
agement to management of supply
chain, both for care and diagnostics.
Please tell us about digital
transformation happening in
the healthcare space in India?
What does the future look like in
five years from now?
The future belongs to connected
healthcare services. IT use for care
and cure is currently limited to offline
information obtained from diagnos-
tics. There is no integration of infor-
mation across channels (like diagnos-
tics/patient records and stakeholders
collaboration). It is very important
that the three get integrated for ef-
fective and responsive care. We at
Curespring focus on addressing this
problem, leveraging our connected
healthcare solutions.
Currently, digital transformation
has started in urban areas around
few business processes like doctor ap-
pointments, billing, patient registra-
tion, diagnostic image management,
etc. Approximately 40 per cent of hos-
pitals have automated the admin pro-
cesses like billing or registration.
How is digital adoption associ-
ated with improving medical
providers’ profitability?
It is very crucial to measure few crit-
ical parameters like optimum utili-
sation of physician’s time, training
of nurses, supply chain management
to spend performance management.
Smaller hospitals are suffering much
more than larger hospitals in these
Currently, digital
transformation has
started in urban areas
around few business
processes like doctor
appointments, billing,
patient registration,
diagnostic image
management, etc.
areas.
Adoption of digital technologies
helps improve availability of patients’
diagnostics information in a timely
way and thereby reducing patient
wait times leading to better patient
satisfaction. For example, in lot of hos-
pitals, patient discharge to bed availa-
bility time, physician’s utilisation, en-
hanced patient inflow through remote
consult are not measured. It takes
some times 5-6 hours for the patient
discharge process to be completed.
Adoption of digital technologies and
integration of systems will go a long
way in improving some of these areas,
and thereby increasing profitability.
How online platforms like Cure-
spring are utilising analytics to
improve overall efficiency of
healthcare delivery?
Curespring today provides three crit-
ical IT platforms for a provider to
enhance doctor-to-doctor collabora-
tion and enable remote care. Using
our connected healthcare services
platform, hospitals have started wit-
nessing enhanced patient inflow due
to better care for remote patients and
improved collaboration inside the hos-
pital.
How is Artificial Intelligence (AI)
being deployed in healthcare
sector? What is its future poten-
tial?
We are investing in automation plat-
Corporate Interview
form around AI to address some of the
critical areas.
Artificial Intelligence, with its abil-
ity to process data in a speedy fash-
ion, will revolutionise healthcare in
the future. An AI-enabled system as
a backup helps reduce medical errors
and increases productivity of medical
professionals.
For example, diabetic retinopathy
exists in at least 20 million people in
India. AI technology can help doctors
collect images of retina of diabetic pa-
tients and then run them through ma-
chines which can quickly scan the im-
ages and arrive at an early diagnosis.
Using AI, one can do predictive
modelling of diseases to prevent dis-
ease outbreak (population health
management areas) and also do pre-
liminary diagnosis and screening.
The right AI system might predict
the outcomes of overusing antibiotics
for patients, even before the doses are
administered.
Using our cloud-based HIS, hospi-
tals have achieved patient discharge
times less than 30 minutes. Using our
connected PACS solution, hospitals
and diagnostic labs have integrated
both patient records and diagnostics
from multiple modalities (both DICOM
and Non-DICOM).
Post demonetisation, digital
payments in healthcare sec-
tor has seen a quantum jump.
What are the opportunities and
challenges you see linked with
digital payments in healthcare?
How Curespring has responded
to the change?
Using platforms like Paytm, patients
can pay consultation charges and di-
agnostics easily.
This will reduce the waiting time
at billing counters and also provides
for adoption of deployment of public
health schemes faster. We do not have
solution in payments space, but we
have integrated our platforms with
online payment platforms.
JANUARY / 2017
ehealth.eletsonline.com 55
 Public Health

Assessing Climate
Change Impact on
PUBLIC HEALTH
There is an urgent need to accept that climate change is a reality and no single
department or a system can manage adaptation, resilience, mitigation in isolation,
says Dr Vikas Desai, Technical Director, Urban Health and Climate Resilience Centre
(UHCRC), Surat, in an interview with Manish Arora of Elets News Network (ENN).

What kind of work UHCRC is do- authorities to upscale and prepare Here environment refers to inter-
ing in the public health space. urban health services to adapt to nal environment like genes, nutrition,
What are the organisation’s climate change challenges. UHCRC immunity, age, sex, lifestyle, etc, and
goals? strategy includes research, training, external environment like physical,
The Urban Health and Climate Re- documentation, networking and con- social, economical, political, service
silience Centre (UHCRC) is one of sultancy. system, etc.
the first such centres in India in- There is no restriction to area of Complex interactions between all
itiated under the Surat Climate work of UHCRC, but it first started external and internal factors decide
Change Trust Governance. This in- its work from Surat city followed by health of an individual, family, society
itiative is supported by Asian City Gujarat state and then in cities of the or a city, district or nation.
Climate Change Resilience Network other states. All external factors are interrelat-
(ACCCRN) of Rockefeller Foundation ed and climate change is a cause as
and executed by the Health Depart- How has the deteriorating well as an effect of changing environ-
ment of Surat Municipal Corporation. environment impacted public ment, and its impact on health. Entire
TARU International is the project health in Indian cities? epidemiological triad is influenced by
holder and knowledge partner. Health is an outcome of complex in- climate change.
UHCRC strives to be a knowledge teraction between human beings and
hub in the area of urban health and environment. What kind of evidence has
climate resilience, addressing public
health and urban climate change ad-
aptation and resilience issues in In- All external factors are interrelated and
dia. This centre has been established
in the western city of Surat known for climate change is a cause as well as an
its public health sensitivity. effect of changing environment, and its impact
Launched in April 2013, the UH-
CRC gets funding support from on health
Rockefeller Foundation. After com-
pleting its tenure in December 2016,
it is in transit phase of sustainabili-
ty mode as a ‘Urban Health and Cli-
mate Resilience Centre of Excellence
(UHCRCE)’ to continue its techno
academic contribution in the field
of urban health, with a climate re-
silience focus not only for the city of
Surat but also for urban Gujarat and
India.
UHCRC aims at studying, piloting
and assisting programmes for city

64 JANUARY / 2017
ehealth.eletsonline.com
 Public Health

UHCRC come across to assess

this impact?
To understand effect of climate
change on public health there is a
need of city specific health and cli-
mate data. UHCRC challenge is to
understand local climate trend, local
health statistics and analysis their
inter relations. To understand pub-
lic health profile of any city, there is
a need to understand its geography,
health services, infrastructure, socio
demography and health seeking be-
haviour of the community.
UHCRC worked on retrospective
health data of Surat city and city
specific climate. It studied public and
private health service network, popu-
lation characteristics, health seeking
behaviour and community behaviour
and participation.
Following these basic studies of
Surat city, UHCRC assessed impact
of heat on public health, floods on
public health, spatial integrated pub-
lic health vulnerability in the city and
community practices and models.
UHCRC also studied public health
vulnerability of seven mega cities of
Gujarat following the Surat city expe-
rience.

With climate change clearly

emerging as key challenge
in near future, how are Indian
cities placed to mitigate its ad-
verse effects on public health?
Climate change is a global phenom-
ena but its impact is local focal. So,
city specific planning needs local
temporal, spatial information based
on which local evidence based infor-
mation can be planned.
One of the major challenges for
health and climate resilience study
is availability of standard data. In
India climate data for every city is
not available. Health data is scarce
and not standardised. Technology
enabled system does not guarantee
adequate coverage and quality data
resulting in to limitations. Though
health is one of the impact of climate
change, it’s more sensitive and emo-
tional indicator for advocacy.
Health focused climate resilience
in urban setup is the need of the hour
as health is not only an individual
challenge but a societal challenge as
well. Impact on health is not only dis-
ease, disability or death it is also loss
of productivity and impact on econo-
my and development. Individual resil-
ience to climate change is dependent
on health status and ability to adapt
to climate changes.
What is needed is health focused
approach to climate resilience, health
Health focused climate
resilience in urban
setup is the need of
the hour, as health is
not only an individual
challenge but a societal
challenge as well
in every urban planning and a process
of strong inter-sectoral convergence to
plan, implement and monitor together.
The urgent need to accept that climate
change is a reality and no single de-
partment or a system can manage
adaptation, resilience and mitigation
in isolation. Health and climate resil-
ience planning and implementation
need to be part of every process. It
cannot wait till some interventions are
over. It has to happen now.
How is UHCRC leveraging tech-
nologies to achieve its targets?
UHCRC explorative studies use tech-
nology for public health and climate
convergence, prepare action plans
like IT supported disease surveil-
lance system, M-health solutions,
community participation and educa-
tion applications.

JANUARY / 2017
ehealth.eletsonline.com 65
 Newsmakers of 2016

Architects of Quality
PUBLIC
HEALTHCARE
Sanjay Gandhi Post Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences (SGPGIMS), Lucknow,
is a premiere tertiary care institution delivering affordable quality healthcare to
millions of people in Uttar Pradesh and north India. With plans afoot to further
transform the institute into a world-class facility, Prof. Rakesh Kapoor, Director,
SGPGIMS, and Associate Professor Dr Rajesh Harsvardhan from SGPGIMS Hospital
Administration speak to Arpit Gupta of Elets News Network about how the
institute’s existing facilities are set to receive a major boost. Excerpts:

ment facilities and increasing number My third plan is to develop a

Prof. Rakesh Kapoor
What do you plan to achieve
in 2017 in terms of improving
healthcare facilities?
Sanjay Gandhi Post Graduate Institute
of Medical Sciences (SGPGIMS)-Luc-
know is a tertiary care institution. It’s
a full-fledged super specialty hospital.
In 2017, we aim to further strength-
en the existing facilities by procuring
more equipment, expanding treat-
of beds. Since we are a referral cen-
tre, we get a lot of patients in need
of emergency tertiary care services
which requires world-class facilities.
I have set a target to implement four
major projects – an emergency med-
icine department, a renal transplant
centre, a liver transplant facility and
robotic surgery.
My first plan is to form an emer-
gency medicine department to be a
280-bed department to treat criti-
cal patients. For example, if a heart
attack patient is referred to us, we
would be having a cardiac suite where
immediately we can treat the patient.
The department will be equipped with
all facilities to treat patients having a
stroke, or gastro problem like bleed-
ing, or patient with dengue or swine
flu.
The second plan is to have a renal
transplant centre. At the moment, in
north India, barring Delhi, we are the
only centre doing renal transplant.
Despite receiving 1,000 referral cases
per year, we are able to do only about
130 transplants a year. Causing a
waiting period is six to eight months
at times. The renal transplant centre
would be equipped with dialysis facil-
ity. It will enable us to treat more pa-
tients with chronic renal failure.
world-class facility for liver trans-
plant. Initially, we started doing liver
transplants but could not carry it for
long. With building and infrastruc-
ture ready and I am going to invest
in the equipment for liver transplant.
We hope to succeed in our endeavour.
The fourth plan is to start per-
forming robotic surgery to keep pace
with innovations happening in this
field. Once we have the equipment in
place, we will go ahead with this plan.
What is your plan to expand the
services to benefit more peo-
ple? Also, what’s your take on
medical tourism?
We will soon shift to a new OPD com-
plex. We are planning to have a 180-
bed daycare ward in the old OPD
complex. This will help us increase
patient intake and treat more people.
We get a lot of patients from Bang-
ladesh, Nepal, Middle East and other
neighbouring countries. But we are un-
able to promote medical tourism due to
long waiting list of patients. If a patient
comes to us for medical tourism, he
would expect immediately admission
and treatment which is not possible
given our limitations.
Please tell us about key R&D

58 JANUARY / 2017
ehealth.eletsonline.com

initiatives the hospital has un-
dertaken?
We have to focus a lot of our atten-
tion on patient care but research is
also one of our primary mottos. We
are doing more research on issues
related to patient care. For example,
ours is one of the primary centres in
the country for Hepatitis E. We have
come up with a lot of good papers on
Hepatitis E and we are providing val-
uable inputs to other hospitals too.
Please tell us about your plans
on collaborating with the Indian
Institute of Technology (IIT).
We are coming up with an ambitious
project in collaboration with the Indi-
an Institute of Technology (IIT). We
are trying to develop some new in-
struments and gadgets to give a boost
to Prime Minister’s ‘Make in India’ in-
itiative, which will make healthcare
affordable and within the reach of all.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is
quite clear that we should adopt lo-
cal innovations. We are dependent on
Western countries and multinational
companies for supplies of healthcare
devices. Through this initiative, we
can come up with our own cheaper
versions.
Dr Rajesh Harsvardhan
As a premier tertiary hospital in
Uttar Pradesh how is SGPGIMS
contributing to improve health-
care delivery system in the
state?
SGPGIMS, an autonomous super spe-
cialty institute of international re-
pute, has left an indelible imprint on
the medical landscape of the country.
It is only second exclusive post grad-
uate institute (no UG programmes)
rendering healthcare to the populace
of the country and even beyond, cov-
ering almost all medical super spe-
cialties supported by cutting edge
technology.
SGPGIMS being at the apex of
healthcare pyramid in Uttar Pradesh
has been improving healthcare de-
livery by adopting three pronged
strategy – research, capacity build-
ing and direct patient care. Through
research, the institute augments and
advances treatment modalities or de-
signs new patterns of care. SGPGIMS
builds capacity by virtue of its well
knit post-doctoroal and post-gradu-
ate programmes under the steward-
ship of Dean Prof. Rajan Saxena. The
institute renders direct patient care
to millions of people with the help of
its wide network of OPD/IPD/ERS/day
care/advance labs.
What are the key healthcare
services being offered at SGP-
GIMS? Can they be expanded?
SGPGIMS is offering super special-
ty services through its over 30 su-
per specialty academic departments
manned by & faculty of international
repute who are leaders in their re-
spective fields and an array of diag-
nostic, interventional and therapeu-
tic arms.
A new OPD block is on the verge of
commissioning and soon there will be
a separate emergency block, which
will augment efficiency and expand
the range of services.
Being a state-run institution,
how the hospital ensures quality
of its services are maintained at
Newsmakers of 2016
par with private providers?
SGPGIMS is committed to quality.
Since its inception, the institute has
been foraying into several newer vis-
tas. It has many firsts to its credit
and it carved many new departments
which were not available anywhere
else in the country. It never believed
in rampant growth.
SGPGIMS, for the first time in pub-
lic sector healthcare, introduced HIS
which highlights its commitment to
quality. The institute conducts many
healthcare audits. Recently, the De-
partment of Hospital Administration
conducted a study along different
parameters of patient safety. Further,
SGPGIMS administration has recent-
ly approved, in principle, the propos-
al to establish a patient safety cell
under Medical Superintendent Prof.
Amit Agarwal.
Which ICT initiatives SGPGIMS
has undertaken to improve
operational efficiency and
increase its mass reach?
SGPGIMS has established country’s
first National Nodal Tele-medicine
Centre, which has been contributing
to the cause of mass outreach. Fur-
ther, SGPGIMS has a department of
Health Informatics taking care of ICT
activities.
The entire interface between pa-
tient and healthcare delivery is on-
line. It includes patient registration,
discharge, investigations and pay-
ments. SGPGIMS has introduced the
pneumatic tube system for transport
of samples from point of collection
to various laboratories for analysis,
which is another first among govern-
ment healthcare organisations in the
country. The Examination Cell also
has an operational online system.
JANUARY / 2017
ehealth.eletsonline.com 59
 Industry View
Pioneering Quality
Healthcare in
NIGERIA
Please tell us about key products and services
offered by Dana Pharmaceuticals and Dana
Drugs Ltd.
Dana is a Nigeria-based conglomerate with diversified
businesses like airlines, steel, automobile, plastic, mineral
water and pharmaceuticals.
Dana’s pharmaceuticals business has offices in Nige-
ria and India. We have two factories in Nigeria. One is in
Ibadan of IV fluids and the other state-of-the-art plant is in
Minna that makes IV fluids, tablets, capsules, etc.
Dana Drugs Ltd is importer of formulations, surgicals
and functions as the distribution arm for imports and lo-
cally manufactured pharmaceutical products with huge
warehousing facilities all over Nigeria in strategic loca-
tions, catering to whole Nigeria with 400 plus distributors.
We are among the top leaders in the field of IV fluids.
Some leading brands in the Nigerian market like Parada-
na (Paracetamol), Danacid (Antacid), Ferrodan (iron sup-
plement) are manufactured and marketed in Nigeria by
Dana.
What are the differences and similarities between
the Indian and Nigerian markets?
The Indian market is more general practitioner-oriented,
whereas the Nigerian market is clinic and polyclinic-ori-
ented at grass root level. Then you have hospitals, primary
healthcare, teaching hospitals, which are similar to India.
The Indian market manufactures latest molecules,
while in the Nigerian market molecules used in the 90’s
60
With an aim to provide better
healthcare to Nigerians, Dana
Pharmaceuticals Pvt Ltd, an Indian
business arm of the Nigeria-based Dana
Group seeks partnerships with Indian
healthcare providers for technology
transfers in areas of healthcare, says Anil
Gidwani, Director-Pharma Business, Dana
Pharmaceuticals Pvt Ltd, Mumbai, in an
interview with Elets News Network (ENN).
are more popular and new molecules are being imported.
The Indian manufacturing has matured, whereas Nige-
ria is trying to improve upon standards every day.
The other difference is that the Indian healthcare sec-
tor is dominated by doctors, while the Nigerian society is
more pharmacist-oriented like in many developed coun-
tries. Pharmacist is a highly respected community in Ni-
geria.
Nigeria manufactures common essential formulations
like Paracetamol, multi-vitamin, iron and common house-
hold remedies and IV fluids. On the other hand, India man-
ufactures most of the latest drugs in the world apart from
regular ones.
Nigeria has to depend on APIs on India and China.
However, some packaging material is available within the
country itself.
What are your plans with regard to India, es-
pecially in view of the improved cooperation
between India and Africa in the field of health?
We have been doing tie-ups with various companies and
are trying to take their products to the Nigerian market so
that Nigerians can get a complete range of affordable med-
icines. We are also looking at aspects of providing better
healthcare to Nigerians with hospital tieups, technology
transfers in areas of healthcare.
Please tell us about key initiatives Dana Pharma
has undertaken to improve healthcare delivery?
Dana Drugs has taken initiatives in CSR activities like de-
worming the children of Nigeria. We did this exercise in
most of the schools in two states and now we are focusing
on anaemic women in Nigeria.
How Dana Pharma utilises ICT to improve its effi-
ciency and services?
We use IT software in our manufacturing activity. We will
be shortly using apps to control and monitor our sales peo-
ple and in many more areas like human resource, etc.
 Host Partner Organiser
Corporate
Industry
Interview
View

Marriott Hotel & Convention Centre, Hyderabad, 10th February 2017

sHri
K. CHaNDrasHEKar rao
Hon’ble Chief Minister, Telangana

Chief Guest spECial guEsT

sHri BoNTHu ram moHaN
sHri K T rama rao Mayor
Greater Hyderabad Municipal
Hon’ble Minister Corporation
IT, Municipal
Administration & Urban
Development, Telangana

programmE CHair
Dr B JanarDhan reDDy
Commissioner
Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation

Invited Speakers @ Urban Development Summit, Hyderabad
Shri S P Singh
Chief Secretary
Government of Telangana
Smt Ranjeev R Acharya
Special Chief Secretary
Higher Education
Government of Telangana
Shri Durga Shanker Mishra
Additional Secretary
Ministry of Urban Development
Shri Praveen Prakash
Joint Secretary
Swachh Bharat Mission, Ministry of Urban
Development, Government of India
Shri Rajeshwar Tiwari
Principal Secretary
Health, Medical & Family Welfare
Government of Telangana
Shri Sunil Sharma
Principal Secretary
Transport, Road & Building Department
Government of Telangana
The conference will be a unique forum
for idea exchange, knowledge sharing,
Smt Chitra Ramchandran
Secretary networking, exploring opportunities for
Housing Department collaboration, while setting the policy
Government of Telangana
Shri Jayesh Ranjan
agenda to meet future challenges in Urban
Secretary Development.
Department of IT, Government of Telangana
Shri Navin Mittal Participation From
Secretary, Municipal Administration &
Urban, Development • Ministry of Urban Development, Government of India
Government of Telangana • Ministry of Road Transport & Highways, Government of India
Smt Christina Z Chongthu • Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology,
Managing Director Government of India
Telangana State Tourism, Development
• Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, Government of India
Corporation
• State Urban Development Departments
Shri K Shashanka
Commissioner
• State Transport Departments
Karimnagar Municipal Corporation • Smart City Corporations
Ms Shruti Ojha • State IT Departments
Commissioner • PSUs
Greater Warangal Municipal Corporation • National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA)
...and many more • Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) ...and many more

Key Themes
Cost and Benefits of Urbanization in India | Best & Next Practices of Smart Cities from Across India | Housing & Slum Upgrading | Planning
& Design | Water & Sanitation | Solid & Liquid Waste Management | Energy | Effective Transportation for Smart Mobility | Sustainable Urban
Transportation | Culture for Sustainable Urban Development - The Way Ahead | Smart Education | Smart Health

For Queries Contact: Fahimul Haque | urbansummit@egovonline.net | +91-8860651632

HEAD OFFICE MIDDLE EAST OFFICE

Elets Technomedia (P) Ltd. Elets Technomedia Pvt Ltd (FZE)
Stellar IT Park, Office No. : 7A/7B, 5th Floor, Annexe Building SAIF Desk Q1 - 05 - 130/A
C-25, Sector 62, Noida, Uttar Pradesh - 201309, India P. O. Box: 124939, Sharjah, U.A.E
Ph: +91-120-4812600

telangana.eletsonline.com | #elets_telangana
JANUARY / 2017
ehealth.eletsonline.com 61
 Industry View

Innovating to
TAKE ON CANCER
Distinguished service provider Cancer Genetics, Inc. (CGI) has a proven track
record of simplifying issues faced by oncologists by offering them critical and
clinically actionable information, says Dr. Mandar Kulkarni, CTO of Cancer
Genetics, Inc. in an interview with Elets News Network (ENN).
How is cancer diagnostic land- health screenings, continue to raise ulation that cannot bear the high cost
scape evolving in India? awareness about early and accurate of these tests offered in a highly price
Effective early diagnosis is the cor- detection of cancer in India. Easy ac- sensitive market. Therefore, adop-
nerstone of efficient clinical manage- cess to information about the impact of tion of advanced precision oncology
ment of cancer. Majority of oncolo- the state-of-the-art DNA sequencing tests is currently limited to a small
gists in India depend on their clinical methods on making better therapeu- sub-section of the society from tier
experience and rely heavily on gold tic choices is increasing the demand one cities. At the same time, several
standard testing methods, although of such testing in the Indian market. service providers that offer such tests
the neo-oncological precision medi- There has been an increase in the de- are focusing effort on modifying the
cine approach has begun to emerge velopment of drugs that target cancer tests to lower costs yet maintain the
as an important component of the promoting genomic changes and war- utility and quality of the test. Lastly,
cancer diagnostic paradigm. The rant testing for the presence of such in the interest of high quality testing
precision oncology approach exploits changes in each cancer patient prior that can save lives of cancer patients,
technological advances in DNA se- to choosing drug regimens. The af- a regulatory framework that qualifies
quencing to identify several ‘cancer fording urban population is demand- clinical service providers is required.
driving’ mutations from an individ- ing clinical cancer management in-
ual’s tumor, and is used to improve line with that available in developed What are the key solutions
treatment outcomes by predicting tu- countries. All these factors, although being offered by CGI?
mour behaviour and the patient’s re- highly conducive for rapid adoption CGI has an established track record
sponse to the chosen drug regimens. of advanced precision oncology test- of developing many solutions that
Several organic efforts, including ing, are outweighed by the inability of detect several mutations and other
cancer screening camps and general a much larger non-urban Indian pop- genomic aberrations from tumour

62 JANUARY / 2017
ehealth.eletsonline.com

tissues or liquid biopsies (circulating
tumor cells, circulating tumor DNA or
cell-free DNA). The clinical relevance
and the collective impact of all chang-
es detected in the tumour allow med-
ical directors at CGI to effectively in-
terpret the data and provide a report
to the medical oncologist so that s/
he may choose the most effective ap-
proach for clinical management of the
patient. Cancer Genetics India offers
sequencing of a panel of 50 genes that
are generally mutated in solid tumors
such as breast, colon, lung, gastroin-
testinal, and ovarian. DNA extracted
from clinical samples is tested for
mutations in genes that are target-
ed for therapy (e.g. Her2 targeted
by trastuzumab or lapatinib, EGFR
targetted by cetuximab or erlotinib,
KIT, RET, PDGF-Rs, VEGF-Rs target-
ed by sunitinib). Mutations in other
genes included in the panel maybe
indicative of the invasiveness of the
tumour. Such information is useful
for the physician to set the patient’s
expectations about therapeutic man-
agement and outcome. At CG-India
we plan on continuing to build on
this offering and bring state-of-the-
art NGS-based cancer diagnostic ca-
pabilities from the western world to
the Indian community. Conducting
studies that focus on re-validating a
few NGS-based diagnostic panels for
the Indian population and developing
novel panels relevant to the Indian
market are on our priority list.
Who are your key collaborators
in India? Please tell us about
your recent projects imple-
mented here?
We collaborate with several su-
per-specialty cancer hospitals as
well as academic cancer centers to
develop and validate precision oncol-
ogy solutions and to enable discovery
projects in the translational oncolo-
gy area. One of our current projects
focuses on validating a fluorescence
in situ hybridisation based FHACT
test to detect cervical cancer from ab-
normal pap smears. Another project
is to identify a genomic signature/
biomarker for early detection of oral
cancer. We are validating several mul-
tigene panels for improved patient
stratification and therapeutic guid-
ance in lung cancer and leukemia
patients. Lastly, we are working to-
wards assessing the utility of a multi-
gene test that will predict response to
immune-therapy for lung cancer.
What are the key challenges
faced by healthcare providers
in diagnosis of cancer?
One of the major challenges faced by
oncologists is that they have a wide
array of therapeutic agents to choose
from. Prior to the advent of target-
ted therapies the choice was guided
primarily by clinical experience and
tumor type. Today we have several
targeted therapies to choose from.
Each drug is specifically designed to
attack tumor cells that harbour the
targetted genomic change. Without
the knowledge of the genomic chang-
es driving tumor growth choosing the
most efficacious drug is challenging.
More recently, immunotherapy has
added a new dimension to clinical
management of cancer. The efficacy
of drugs that block immuno-suppres-
sion and enable the patient’s immune
system to attack the tumour can be
predicted by genomic testing as well.
Large data volumes and com-
plex data interpretation
schemes present anoth-
er challenge for clini-
cians. Distinguished
service providers like
CGI have a strong
track record of sim-
plifying these prob-
lems and presenting
only the critical and
clinically actionable
information to clini-
cians.
Which technolog-
ical innovations
according to you
look promising in
containing the rising
incidences of cancer?
Next generation sequencing
technology has al-
ready rev-
olu-
Industry View
tionised our approach and has
enabled us to take big strides in the
area of precision oncology. Continued
decrease in the cost of sequencing,
the increased ease of operating the
sequencing machines, and decreas-
ingly complex workflows for per-
forming genomic tests is expected
to drive adoption of these tests. Au-
tomation in the “data-to-reporting”
pipelines will also greatly affect the
timeline and accuracy of obtaining
clinically actionable information for
each patient. Field deployable min-
iaturized sequencers, and innovative
approaches to enrichment of genom-
ic targets for testing are expected to
contribute significantly to improving
the laboratory workflows.
Please apprise us about your
future expansion plans.
We are currently focusing on building
a comprehensive portfolio of person-
alized oncology testing services. We
are also supporting efforts for the
discovery of new genomic biomark-
ers for early detection of cancer. We
intend to transform our bioinformat-
ics facility into a center-of-excellence
to support discovery pipe-
lines as well as au-
tomate the clin-
ical reporting
workflows.
JANUARY / 2017
ehealth.eletsonline.com 63
 Industry View

BUILDING
INFIRMARIES
for Life
Having delivered a wide array of projects ranging from upgradation of existing
medical departments to development of new hospital on turnkey basis,
Sunil Agarwal, Country Head of Enraf Nonius Projects India Ltd, sees innumerous
opportunities for cooperation between Indian and Dutch healthcare sectors in
areas ranging from R&D of new medicines to healthcare products, in conversation
with Elets News Network (ENN). Excerpts:

As a supplier of turnkey health-
care projects, what are the key
opportunities you see emerging
in India?
The Indian healthcare industry is
very advanced and we can learn a
lot from it. India offers innovative,
sustainable and affordable health-
care solutions for a large population.
There are many potential fields for
co-operation ranging from research
and development of new medicines
to healthcare products. However, the
healthcare delivery market is not
well balanced. There is a big well de-
veloped private market in India, but
the services of the public market are
not so well organised as compared to
the private sector, which is a big chal-
lenge.
The Netherlands, where Enraf No-
nius Projects India Ltd’s parent com-
pany Enraf-Nonius B.V. is based, is
home to a vibrant life science health
cluster of more than 2,200 life sci-
ence and medi tech companies and
research organisations – all within a
120-mile radius. Holland is the most
geographically concentrated region
in the world when it comes to creat-
ing economic and social value in life
science and health.
The LSH sector includes a number
of closely related industries includ-
ing Philips, a world leader in medical
imaging and patient monitoring, and
DSM, a biomaterials leader. Exper-
tise in healthcare infrastructure is
characterised by a turn-key plus ap-
proach. Dutch companies are able to
cover all aspects ranging from hospi-
tal design and engineering, financing

64 JANUARY / 2017
ehealth.eletsonline.com
 Industry View

and waste management to medical

equipment while paying special at-
tention to energy efficiency and heal-
ing enjoinments.
The excellent medical research
infrastructure is strongly focused
on translational research in differ-
ent medical fields such as oncology,
cardiovascular, immunology and neu-
roscience. Our company is a global
market leader in mobile healthcare,
which enables to contribute to rural
healthcare in developing countries
around the globe. We have an excel-
lent research and innovation port-
folio in a number of niches, such as
vaccination, antibiotic resistance and
polio.
Dutch healthcare ranks number
one compared to the US, Australia,
New Zealand, Germany and Cana-
da. The Netherlands is consistent
number one in the ranking of the Eu-
ro-Health Consumer Index.
India has a lot to contribute to the
Netherlands healthcare sector by of-
fering joint research and opening up
the market for joint development of
equipment and medical devices. The
management for running a private
hospital could be of added value to
the Dutch system.
What are the key target mar-
kets for EN-Projects?
As a turnkey contractor we design,
build, equip, train, maintain and fi-
nance and we are open to any market
across the globe.
KEY PROJECTS DELIVERED WORLDWIDE
♦ Sri Lanka Ministry of Health -- Hambantota Hospital
♦ Sri Lanka Ministry of Health -- Nuwara Eliya Hospital
♦ Ghana Ministry of Health -- Winneba Specialist Trauma
Hospital
♦ Ghana Ministry of Health -- Tarkwa District Hospital
♦ China -- Shaoxing Hospital
♦ China -- Dalian Hospital
♦ Saint Lucia -- EU Owen King Hospital
♦ Saint Lucia -- Dental Clinics
♦ UAE -- Kalba Hospital
♦ Gambia Ministry of Health & Social Welfare -- annual drugs
supply
♦ Gambia Ministry of Health & Social Welfare -- Serekunda,
Bwiam and Soma Hospitals
♦ Ghana Ministry of Health, 16 Rehabilitation Centres
♦ Ghana Ministry of Health, 21 dental clinics
♦ Indonesia Police Department, 7 Police Hospitals
♦ Indonesia Ministry of Health, 54 Medical Rehabilitation
Centres
♦ Nigeria Ministry of Health, National doping laboratory
♦ Mexico, PESP energy efficient Hospital design
♦ China Ministry of Health, Koshin Beck and Rehabilitation
Centres
♦ Philippines, Adventist Hospital
♦ Niger Ministry of Health, Niamey Hospital
♦ Libya Ministry of Health, Al Baida Hospital
♦ Libya Ministry of Education, Garyounis University Medical
Hospital
♦ Kenya, Kenyatta Hospital Pharmacy Production Department
♦ Jordan, National Oil CO. Ras Lanuf Hospital

What are the key components
of a world-class hospital and
how do you put them together?
The key components of a world-class
hospital include hospital building and
infrastructure; healthy aging includ-
ing rehabilitation; health systems
strengthening including e-health
and management; medical devices,
equipment and medical technology;
education and training; best practice
sharing and alignment with national
health policies of the respective coun-
tries. We bring all these components
together to deliver a world-class in-
frastructure.
Being involved in all develop-
ment phases of a healthcare
facility, what are the major
challenges you face in markets
like Asia, Africa and Mid-
dle-East?
The challenges we faced in the mar-
ket like Asia, Africa and Middle East
include accessibility due to poor
health care infrastructure; afforda-
bility owing to low relative purchas-
ing power; and uncertain government
relations.
How had been the bygone
year for EN-Projects? What
are your targets for 2017 and
beyond?
2016 was a fantastic year for us.
Many projects are there in pipeline.
We are dealing with Government of
Telangana for construction of a 4,250
bed hospital and we are also build-
ing a 2,000 bed hospital in Andhra
Pradesh. We have an ongoing 250-bed
hospital project in Suriname and a
200-bed hospital in Fizi. We have re-
ceived grants from the Dutch gover-
ment for a project in Mozambique, a
300-bed hospital in Papua New Guin-
ea, a 250-bed healthcare facility for
Cape Vedra and Jamaica. We are also
in touch with the Government of Iran
and the Republic of the Congo for
hospital projects. All these projects
will be financed, designed, built and
equipped by Enraf Nonius group.

JANUARY / 2017
ehealth.eletsonline.com 65
 Corporate Interview

TECHNOLOGY
for Healthcare Delivery
Bridging the learning and knowledge-sharing gap among the Indian medical
community, Docplexus -- an online networking platform for clinicians -- is growing
from strength to strength by empowering doctors and improving healthcare
outcomes for millions of Indian patients. Phanish Chandra, CEO and Co-founder,
Docplexus, speaks to Elets News Network (ENN) about the company’s partnerships,
impact it has created and future expansion plans.

What is the vision behind Docplexus? How did
you conceive the idea of establishing this com-
pany?
Docplexus was conceived with the intention of leveraging
technology to improve healthcare delivery in India. It all
started after the tragic death of my younger brother from
neurocysticercosis. Delay in diagnosis was the primary
cause of his demise. This was a major shock for the en-
tire family, most of whom were doctors themselves. The
incident revealed the gross deficiencies in the existing
systems of learning and knowledge-sharing amongst the
Indian medical community. I resolved to change this and
created Docplexus - an online networking platform for
clinicians to access latest medical news, discuss clinical
cases and learn. Docplexus’ vision is to empower doctors
and improve healthcare outcomes for millions of Indian
patients every year.
Which service offerings of Docplexus differenti-
ate it from other platforms connecting doctors to
diagnose and treat patients?
Docplexus is equipped to host clinical discussions, surveys,
surgical videos, live webinars, CME programmes and KOL
interviews. Our partnership with Coliquio GmBH, a German
healthcare startup, allows us to harness their rich expe-
rience in the European market, particularly in client en-
gagement. Our strength lies in the fact that we are the only
Indian platform with both, a web and mobile presence. This
gives our users more choice and convenience. Our web app
allows for seamless integration of all of our offerings.
What kind of impact has the company been able
to create in healthcare sector of India?
Docplexus is India’s largest and fastest growing online
doctor community. We enjoy the trust of 165,000 physicians
for their learning and networking needs. Over 12,000 doc-
tors log onto our platform daily. We have already hosted
12,000 clinical case discussions and 75 interactions with
KOLs comprising eminent international faculty, industry
pioneers and recipients of prestigious awards. Our CME
programmes and KOL interviews have narrowed the gap
between doctors’ learning needs and traditional solutions.
This has equipped doctors with the knowledge and skills
to deliver better treatment and care. It is immensely sat-
isfying to see Docplexus bring about such positive impact
on Indian healthcare.

What are your future expansion plans? Where do

you see Docplexus heading in five years from
now?
Docplexus is steadily progressing towards its goal of
reaching 200,000 members by March 2017 and 400,000
members in the next three years. Our ultimate vision is to
empower each and every practitioner of modern medicine
in India and create better clinical outcomes for 100 million
patients each year.

66 JANUARY / 2017
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