Innovate
Future of Healthcare is Vertical Innovations in healthcare that allow us to improve access, affordability and effectiveness
Venugopal Ganapathy, Co-founder and CEO, Axilor
The most common metaphor to assess
In the last few years, with consumer
one's optimism is whether a glass is
adoption of digital technologies, the
seen as half-full. Unfortunately, that
incumbents have either met tough
metaphor does not work if one were
competition from 'neo-banks' or struck
to apply it to healthcare in general.
partnerships
The more accurate one will be a near-
to leverage. This has made consumer
empty glass, leaving very little room
access,
for optimism. The data points are
easier, be it in banking, credit or
depressing across the board. In every
investments. Slowly with time, the
discipline, the availability of doctors
acquisition models are ceding ground to
or specialists is at least one-tenth of
full-stack models, a logical consequence
what we need and even that is poorly
of success and scale.
distributed. When it comes to access, the difference
is
stark with more
than 40 per cent of the doctors in the
and
platforms
on-boarding
Increasingly, within our portfolio and outside, we are witnessing interesting possibilities of improving access and
disease burden of non-communicable
affordability for key care verticals with
diseases is galloping and treatment
these hybrid models (with the right mix
effectiveness is lagging. In cancer, two
of digital and physical). These models
out of three diagnosed with cancer do
are vertical-specific, leverage digital
not live. In cardiovascular diseases, the
reach while complementing existing
mortality is almost one in four within
healthcare infrastructure to achieve
the first year of diagnosis. Efficient and
better capacity utilisation. Working with
cost-effective elective surgeries are
these innovative companies, I could
available in less than 20 per cent of
identify a few innovation vectors that
the hospitals, mostly confined to urban
could significantly impact health care
areas, aggravating the economic burden
outcomes.
of innovations in healthcare will allow us to improve access, affordability and effectiveness?
October 2021
acquisition
digital
country being in just four states. The
to the larger population. So what kind
40
with
The first vector is simply utilising existing infrastructure better. A good example is what we are seeing in the elective surgeries space. Companies
One good place to start is to look at what
like Medfin, have made it easier and
is happening in other traditional sectors
affordable for people to get elective
with similar problems and apply them.
surgeries. They do this by utilising
The financial sector has a lot to offer.
excess operating theatre capacity of
