NATHEALTH Summit - industry and government representatives call for stronger PPP models for a resilient healthcare ecosystem

New Delhi [India], March 30 (ANI/BusinessWire India): NATHEALTH - The Healthcare Federation of India held its 8th Annual Summit on the theme, "Re-building, Re-structuring and Re-imagining resilient healthcare systems in India in a post-pandemic era" on March 28-29 2022. The summit aimed to unite industry and the government together in one platform to discuss, deliberate and pave the path for a stronger, resilient health system in India which is future-ready to tackle any unprecedented emergencies.
The two-day summit had a stellar line-up of over 120 speakers comprising top government policymakers, leaders from hospitals, medical technology and diagnostics sectors, insurance, medical education, pharmaceuticals, global multi-stakeholder organizations, start-ups, investors, and global domain experts. Overall, the summit was attended by almost 5000 delegates from the healthcare fraternity and related fields.
The Summit focused on three critical themes of current times led by top Indian healthcare leaders. The plenary session was led by Dr Ashutosh Raghuvanshi, Vice President-NATHEALTH, MD & CEO, Fortis Hospitals focused on Building a resilient healthcare system in India that prioritizes equity and access to take a people-centric approach by bringing in other sectors as well. The second plenary session was led by Ameera Shah, Secretary-NATHEALTH, MD, Metropolis India focused on Re-structuring health care financing for alternate care delivery and other innovative models to explore new ways to raise funds, allocate resources in the optimum manner to ensure equity and quality healthcare for everyone.
The third plenary session was led by Dr Shravan Subramanyam, SVP NATHEALTH and President and CEO, GE Healthcare India & South Asia and Managing Director, Wipro GE Healthcare that focused on Re-imagining integrated care delivery through digital adoption and supply chain innovation. Amid the acute resources shortages as seen during the pandemic, digital collaboration on patient recoveries, testing numbers, vaccine outreach and procurement of crucial supplies highlight the need for out-of-the-box supply chain models, leveraging the potential of digital health, telemedicine, and home care, and harnessing the contribution of medical technology and pharmaceutical sector.
The Summit also focused on how health-tech start-ups can leverage the booming start-up ecosystem and the role of start-up accelerators in defining acceleration stage and readiness and the reason why government must focus and encourage collaboration with the new-age startups and entrepreneurs as an immediate step towards ramping up health infra to make Indian healthcare ecosystem future-ready.
The summit also hosted the business opportunity pavilion. This was an opportunity for everyone to learn from various stakeholders from around the world who are building highly innovative models in healthcare which has proved to be highly resilient during the pandemic and has the potential to become the 'next big thing' in this new era of uncertainties. At the same time, it presented new opportunities to collaborate with each other to create new win-win outcomes.
With an aim to unite all stakeholders in healthcare and in tandem with NATHEALTH 3.0's strategic agenda, NATHEALTH, in collaboration with The Bridgespan Group and Sahamanthran, for the first time presented the Healthcare CSR Awards Ceremony to bring together and felicitate corporations practicing healthcare CSR and other philanthropic organizations in this field. The session also witnessed insightful discussion around healthcare CSR and the global best practices. The award ceremony was presided over by Smriti Irani, Minister of Women and Child Development, Government of India.
Apollo Hospital Groups CSR project, Total Health lifted the champion's title
Dr Lal PathLabs Ltd CSR project, LPL Academy for Laboratory Medicine (Skill Development and Livelihood Generation in the area of healthcare) were the first runner up
Roche Diagnostics India's CSR project, Project Roshni were the second runner up
DeepTek Medical Imaging Private Limited's CSR project, DeepTek Medical Imaging Private Limited were the third runner up
Presiding over the awards ceremony, Smriti Irani, Minister of Women and Child Development, Government of India, said, "India would not have survived the devastating waves of the COVID-19 pandemic without the greatest support from the healthcare workforce. Almost 6.6 million Indian women served the country during the pandemic as doctors, nurses, and grassroot healthcare workers, visiting door to door, ensuring that basic COVID protocol and hygiene is followed, and the health of rural population is taken care of."
She further added, "The recent budget has increased the allocation for health to 16.5 per cent. Today the Government of India is committed to spend eighteen thousand crore rupees for the betterment of the healthcare system of our country starting from the district level. In order to serve the healthcare needs of our country, to mitigate the infrastructural challenges our Prime Minister introduced Ayushman Bharat program, and it is functional in 33 states including some of the union territories. Under the Ayushman Bharat, till date the Government has issued 17 crore 90 lakhs health cards, 3 crore 26 lakhs Indian have found admissions in over 25,000 hospitals and 47 per cent of those beneficiaries are women who got treated for critical issues like cervical cancer and breast cancer. Every second, 20 beneficiaries get healthcare services under Ayushman Bharat Program. While COVID has thrown many challenges, but with the help of the Ayushman Bharat program, we are able to address and bridge many of those long-standing gaps caused by the pandemic in last two years. We hope, going forward, the strong collaboration between the private and the public sector players would help us build healthy India for a better tomorrow."
Speaking about the summit Dr Harsh Mahajan, President - NATHEALTH and Founder and Chief Radiologist, Mahajan Imaging, said, "Health is now a global priority, and it is imperative for health systems around the world to rebuild themselves to be much more resilient and robust in readiness for medical crises in future. NATHEALTH has been successfully organizing annual summits to address key issues significant for the Indian healthcare ecosystem and engage with all stakeholders across sectors with an aim to improve access and quality of care through leveraging innovation and technology. The 8th Annual Summit of NATHEALTH has successfully discussed the important learnings from the pandemic, shed light on the global best practices from industry leaders in the healthcare ecosystem from start-ups to philanthropic organizations, contributed towards creating new operating mechanisms, harness knowledge and technology to ensure accessibility and affordability of healthcare services - that holds utmost importance especially in the post-pandemic era. The summit highlighted many areas around the evident gaps in healthcare infrastructure, equipment, human resource, and supply chain where stakeholders shared their ideas and views to build and strengthen capacity of India's public health system. We believe the summit has been successful enough to attract policymakers and investors to come forward and join hands together for improving the health system of India."
For further details, kindly refer to: www.nathealthsummit.com
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