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Press Release

Ayushman Bharat - World's largest accessible healthcare program is totally digital: Dr R S Sharma, CEO, National Health Authority

Sep 21, 2022

NEW DELHI, 21 September 2022: Rebuilding efficient healthcare systems are essential today to address the increasing disease burden and fuel economic growth. Healthcare delivery models must therefore be patient-centric and drive results through impact and influence. Understanding disease trends and engaging in community-wide awareness can widen the healthcare professional's ability to provide specialized treatment and support the three core pillars in healthcare - availability, accessibility, and affordability. 

The Healthcare ecosystem across the world is working towards equal accessibility and affordable for all through efficient value chain including hospitals, pharma companies, medical equipment's industry, manpower, diagnostic centres, and other stakeholders.

Dr R S Sharma, CEO, National Health Authority, Ministry of Health, GoI shared that Ayushman Bharat is the largest healthcare program and has processed around INR 55,000 crores in claims since the launch of the program in 2017.

Highlighting how various stakeholders can work in an integrated manner to ensure access to healthcare services, Dr Sharma stated that the benefits of Ayushman Bharat he pointed out that it has given access to hospitalization to over 40 million people and covers all the diseases following a paperless system making quality healthcare accessible to all.

Dr Sangita Reddy, Joint Managing Director, Apollo Hospitals stated that India needs to cover ground in area of accessibility as still ratio of patients to bed, hospitals, doctors is quite low. Dr Reddy highlighted that health should bring people together and that happened during Covid-19. She also pointed out that India shared COVID-19 vaccines with 107 countries across the globe and also inoculated 216 crores domestic population. She also underscored that healthcare is being transformed by the 3Bs: Biology, Bytes (tech.) and Bandwidth (accessibility).

Ms Tisha Boatman, Global Business Lead, Access to Care, Siemens Healthineers mentioned that COVID-19 showed the world and industry how connected we are and how? What happens at one place has an impact across the world. She also added that diagnostics have become more important. Consumerism, self-testing, and self-monitoring will increase in the coming years in healthcare sectors as now one needs to think healthcare from the perspective of the patients.

The key takeaways from the session:

  • Primary Healthcare requires a lot of focus making it accessible to all to counter non-communicable diseases like heart issues, cancer and obesity.
  • 3Es: Enablement, Enhancement and Empowerment are three trends that can make healthcare more accessible to all.
  • India can leverage the largely developed digital data network with an enormous footprint of digital devices to make healthcare affordable and accessible to all.

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