The changing face of the Indian healthcare industry: a focus on access, affordability and quality | Mint

An increasing demand for personal health care, effectiveness in the cost of healthcare and digital innovations changes the face of the Indian healthcare industry. There is a strong pressure on achieving greater levels of efficiency in the cost of healthcare that have arisen in India over the past few years, thus ensuring that quality health care becomes more accessible and sustainable. Adapting this transformation is rapid progress in the digital space, which creates new possibilities in how healthcare is delivered and experienced by both sides as well as suppliers. In a country as large and diverse as India, it is expected to address some fundamental challenges, including expanding access to quality healthcare over different geographical areas that ensure affordability for a much greater part of our population and at the same time increase the quality of health care provided. Global Capability Centers (GCCs) such as Optum India, the GCC of United Health Group, plays an important role in this transformation journey, as it goes beyond the traditional roles focused on cost savings and operational efficiency. In a recent panel discussion, Optum India leaders, including Rohit Agarwal, senior vice president for transformation, innovation and enabling, Abhishek Kumar, Senior Vice President for Operations, Sendra Singh, Senior Vice President for Operations, Madhuri Raya, Vice President of Software Engineering A more human problems sitting by the Indian Healthcare industry shared system, powered by frontline-led innovation and deeply integrated techops cultures. Important Challenges in Health Care “I think the three major challenges in healthcare are lower costs, improved access to care and the quality of the outcomes. The healthcare costs have been steadily rising over the years. If you look at the US, I think it was more than 5 trillion more than inflation in the country,” Surdered Singh said, because he put the context for the context. The second challenge access to healthcare in the remote corners of any country-during the pandemic, has seen progress with the introduction of Tele-Health, which brought your doctor to your smartphone screen. But it also has its challenges regarding safety, privacy and the depth at which teleconsultation can provide the right degree of care. Finally, he emphasized the imperative not only to give care, but to ensure its effectiveness. “Technology has enabled us to manage health outcomes in real time, manage protocols, procedures, best actions, compliance with medicine, and so on. We need to continue to strengthen a part of this to become more real time, to also monitor health outcomes, rather than just in the health care facilities. Doctor spending a lot of admin activities, which is essential to get refunds for the provision provided. However, doctors need the right act to provide value -based care to their patients. Interoperability, she explained, is of the utmost importance to enable major population health data. There is a preventative and a healing aspect of healthcare, and both must be integrated into the solutions, if lift information can be better to take care of themselves using the use of using the use of using using the use of using data, and it is better to take care of the use of using data. (AI) and other emerging technology such as Smart Wearables, which can help with prevention as well as healing with early diagnosis. Innovative Solutions for the Ecosystem for Health Care The panel discussed the most important drivers for innovation, which includes people, process, technology and data. It starts with an informed and a technical consumer who can use the internet and understand his/ her health, find the right doctor, make a price comparison, make an appointment and make changes if necessary. “It is to make sure that the entire health care experience is in the hands of the consumer at a place and at a time when the consumer needs it. I think it’s going to be an absolutely critical tendency,” Rohit Agarwal said. The second one is around well -being, which gets priority. The third one is a digital platform that helps promote interoperability, and the last one is the move to value -based competency models. Agarwal further felt that Optum was an important driver of this change, and said: ‘I think Optum is well positioned to really accelerate and drive this innovation in the healthcare industry. We have a program that calls us innovation, which is our innovation framework, which really helps us to accelerate various aspects of innovation. Synergy between technology and business operations The panelists underlined the critical need for alignment between technology and operations, which is a shift from the historical model in which technology and operations were two different functions that work from different office spaces. “If we are able to look at the co-location of activities and technology teams, it can drive many synergies and fill many silos. Get technology and OPs can enable you to make sure your technology road map is linked to the patient’s preferences and the provider’s requirements,” says Kumar. “The second element is how do you look at adjacent abilities, and how do you create value from it? At Optum we have all the abilities. We make demands, we do revenue cycle management, we do clinical, pharmacy benefit management. If you look at it, each of them serves the patient or the supplier at some point. Identifying opportunities The health care space is filled with new innovations to tackle challenges around quality and consumer experience. The panel also discussed how leaders can find the right solutions to prioritize. “Innovation will only be effective if it is in line with the priorities of the business. It is therefore extremely critical that we make sure that everyone in the organization understands what the priorities of the business are,” says Agarwal. He also emphasized the importance of a patient -centered approach, adding: “It is important to make sure that we are the consumer in the middle of everything we do, make our focus on the right real problems, the actual pain points.” At Optum this is done by ‘Voice of the Consumer Surveys’, ‘Voice of the Employee’ and ‘Voice of the Process’. “We utilize our innovative framework … a multifaceted program that brings together people, process, technology and data to make sure we can really focus on the most important things and accelerate innovation throughout the enterprise. Ideas can be everywhere, but ideas are really created or combined if we have a strong innovation culture. And I think it is most important,” he said. The development of the technological organizations such as Optum provides several ways for business teams to keep abreast of this landscape of changing technologies and ongoing innovation. Raya talked about the Optum Tech University that offers many courses in technology, operational agility, organizational agility, design thinking, customer centricity and the like. They also organize industry -oriented opportunities that “bring in the industry, our technology partners and our own employees in one case … to investigate what we can do for the future of technology”. ‘Continuous renovation and recognition and the creation of an environment such as a sandbox area … so that employees can actually work there, build their systems without disrupting their core functionality, is some of the important steps towards innovation. With the measurement of success, the panel emphasized the importance of building solutions that are scalable. “A creativity thoughts are the key if you build solutions, identify and deal with your stakeholders. I think the diverse perspectives of various stakeholders help build strong systems,” Raya said. “Innovation initiatives should be in line with strategic objectives that it should be measured by some pre-defined KPIs, which emphasize the importance of balancing our short-term victories against the long-term value creation,” says Singh. He has set some key points that make innovations successful, the first intern of which is by employees and external by clients for which they need to be simple and effective. “I think higher adoption rates are a true signal that we have solved a real problem, whether internally, for our team members or for our members or clients. Secondly, you measure them qualitatively as well as quantitatively,” he said. Finally, the future of Indian health care is linked to the evolution of his GCCs. As these hubs continue to mature, their focus on technological advances, innovative solutions and a deeply complicated patient-first approach will contribute to the build-up of a healthcare ecosystem that is more effective and accessible to all, but also fundamentally more focused on the individual needs of each Indian. Note for the reader: This article was manufactured on behalf of the brand by HT Brand Studio and does not have journalistic/editorial involvement of Mint.