Tuesday 7 October 2014

Could India Lead the Way in Global Medical Diagnostic Solutions?

Molecular diagnostics, imaging technologies, and high-bandwidth telecommunications are important enablers for disruptive business models in healthcare because they greatly facilitate the movement of medical conditions from intuitive and empirical medicine to precision medicine, where the diagnosis and therapies for these conditions are perfectly or near-perfectly understood. 


Once a condition is within the realm of precision medicine, the scope of practice should be widened for less-credentialed providers to administer diagnoses and provide therapy since there is little possibility of error, the cost of care decreases, and specialists' time and attention can be refocused on true problems. Allowing for expanded practice scope results in more primary care doctors, nurses, PAs, NPs, and others solving the problem on the first visit, greatly mitigating one of the primary cost drivers of the ever-more-expensive U.S. healthcare system: Referrals. Once our understanding of a condition has graduated to the realm of precision medicine, passing the buck is no longer necessary. 

Of course, there are many rules and regulations in place that inhibit practice scope expansion, and thus the need for disruptive business models that prove out the value of administering precision medicine efficiently by gaining market footholds in alternative value networks. Once successful, such business models compel legislative reform on the basis of their fait accompli market victories. 

In the U.S., there are currently several auxiliary efforts to disrupt diagnostics underway; important and impactful to be sure, but not sterling examples of diagnostic technology's promise to disrupt healthcare. For example, American Well and Project Echo both leverage telecom and mobile technology to nip as many problems and as much of each problem in the bud as possible before recommending an expensive in-person visit to either a PCP or specialist. Retail clinics also continue to spend a great deal of money lobbying for practice scope expansion on a state by state basis, e.g. CVS Minute Clinic fighting for pharmacists' of NPs' ability to perform more precision medicine procedures.

Medical technology can greatly aid in establishing the most efficient, low-cost care processes for precision medicine possible, and improved diagnostics should be at the center of these new business models. But where to look for it? 

I believe India will be a source of truly disruptive diagnostic technology for several reasons. Firstly, it is a market forced to create alternative value networks as entrepreneurs attempt to radically expand access to care with radically affordable products and processes. Secondly, the diagnosis / therapy process in India is not necessarily constrained by rule and regulation to the degree it is in the U.S., allowing for expansion of practice scope as needed. For example, a large part of why Narayana Hrudayalaya is able to perform heart surgery at 1% the cost of the same surgery in the U.S. is that the specialist only does the grafting, which takes about an hour, while a support staff of junior doctors, trainees, nurses and paramedical staff complete the other 4 hours of work consisting of harvesting of veins/arteries, opening and closing of the chest, suturing and other procedures. 

Thirdly, there are several Indian medtech manufacturers that have been in operation for 1-3 decades, and have the technological and manufacturing know-how to start creating truly disruptive diagnostic products for the Indian market as a whole. For example, Trivitron--the largest medical device maker of Indian origin--claims that to "realize Dr. GSK Velu's dream of providing affordable healthcare solutions to all sections of the population, the Trivitron Group now also designs, innovates and manufactures medical equipment across the entire healthcare spectrum." 

Given Trivitron's Facebook post yesterday about bringing 4 new microbiology diagnostics products to market, along with Dr. Velu's closing comments at the recent FICCI Heal 2014 conference to give more focus and attention in India "due to very high import dependency," I would expect to find several promising diagnostic innovations being developed organically from within indigenous R&D centers, such as the Trivitron-IIT Madras Innovation Center. While it's true that companies like Trivitron will find breaking out of their traditional roles as manufacturers and distributors of imported products and technologies to the still-limited Indian healthcare infrastructure, developments like Trivitron's acquisition of Dubai-based ETA Star Healthcare enabling for an export strategy to other developing markets is an encouraging sign. 


Photo Credit: http://internetmedicine.com/iphone-smart-ultrasound/ 

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