Towards A Healthier Future..

In 2018, India has made significant progress in improving affordability, accessibility and efficiency of health care. The Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojna (PMJAY) launched earlier this year is possibly the most ambitious and largest public health program in the world.  As this flagship program takes off, it is imperative to leverage technology meaningfully to support and further enable the growth of such public health care initiatives.  In addition to health and wellness management, technology can also help in smooth administration and roll out of this universal health care program through identification of potential cases of health fraud. A combination of robust processes, trained manpower and timely action backed by state-of-the-art IT systems can help in preventing, detecting and deterring health care fraud effectively.

Today, as we can see technology is pervasive across every aspect of health care, including patient care, fraud prevention, population health management and disease surveillance etc. Health care sector is seeing a transformation with onset of preventive health and wellness solutions that rely on lifestyle related data generated by the multitude of fitness tracking devices and mobile applications that are a normal part of daily life today. The value and insights we can derive from integration and analysis of such health related data are immense. A few examples:

1. Chronic disease management will be more effective with real time tracking of disease spread across areas, proactive inventory management of vaccines and accurate assessment of medicine availability 

2. Combination of phenotypic data with genotypic data available through genome mapping can help predict future risk of disease empowering individuals to take timely decisions and manage their health related risks. 

Both central and state governments have developed policies to promote the use of technology to improve health care delivery and outcomes in India. Additionally, public / private partnerships / collaborations will act as key enablers to bridge the technology gap in health care in India. Clean energy and ubiquitous data bandwidth will make remote health and access to care solutions more affordable, and commoditized over time.

With technology evolving every single day, some upcoming trends which will drive health care industry are:

* Personal Health Monitoring Devices (IOT) will change the way we track the health of individuals

* 3D printing is changing the way we look at replacement organs, exoskeletons, casts and beyond

* Technologies like Block chain will soon redefine how we populate and maintain Electronic Health Records, and how we link them to Payments, Insurance etc.

* Artificial Intelligence will increasingly assist physicians, health workers and care givers in Triage, Diagnosis and Treatment

Going forward, such advances in health monitoring, wearable devices, cloud based Electronic Health records, mHealth apps will redefine the health care landscape in India to improve the quality of care provided to citizens.