Mumbai / Bangalore, July 20, 2022: Building on its commitment to creating an ecosystem of equitable healthcare opportunities through technology, NASSCOM Centre of Excellence today hosted its flagship healthcare initiative LHIF – Lifesciences & Healthcare Innovation Forum. Spearheading India’s vision for digitizing the healthcare industry, the forum highlighted top industry priorities in achieving value-based healthcare through focused policies and accelerated technological innovations.

On the sidelines, NASSCOM also unveiled its report – ‘Healthcare in India - Transforming Through Innovation’, showcasing the evolution witnessed in the Indian Healthcare ecosystem with emerging technologies and innovation driving this transformation. The report highlights the importance of tech-driven innovations and focused healthcare expenditure and investment to further drive growth in the healthcare ecosystem. The findings are based on the analysis of the top use case submissions received during the 3rd Edition of NASSCOM Healthcare Innovation Challenge conducted by NASSCOM Center of Excellence – IOT & AI. 

Speaking at the forum, Hon'ble Dr. C N Ashwathnarayan, Minister of Electronics, IT, BT & ST, Higher Education, GoK, said, “The three most significant things in today’s day and age are healthcare, education, and basic government services. In the state of Karnataka, we are spending more than 10,000 crores on healthcare and medical education and for government healthcare, we are spending more than 6,000 crores to some 500 crores. How the patients are getting the care and what kind of help delivery is happening, is very crucial. Today, we are still going through challenging times, but continuous work can mitigate the difficulties. We must work together for a better future by ensuring adoption of right technology and availability of the talent.”

Debjani Ghosh, President, NASSCOM, said, “Healthcare plays a tremendously important role not just because of its economic value but the impact it can have on drug discovery and improving the quality of human lives. We have the opportunity to reimagine what healthcare stands for and what healthcare can do. Just as India created history by crossing the 2 billion COVID vaccination vaccine dose milestone, I do believe that we have what it takes to lead the development of quality health care at scale and if we can solve this problem for India, we will revolutionize health care for the world.’’

Ashok Soota, Executive Chairman, Happiest Minds Technologies, said, “The theme of the program of knowledge and equitable access to healthcare is something of great importance to everybody. The pace of change in modern medicine as well as integrated medicine is increasing so rapidly. However, knowledge percolates down to the common person, mostly through the medical community. Today, modern science is building many newer therapies and people do need to know very early about some of the directions which are taking place and their benefits.”

The event brought together 100+ senior decision-makers from government, healthcare enterprises, hospitals, pharmaceutical firms, medical devices, diagnostic companies’ startups/innovators, academia, and major investors. Eminent leaders from the industry like Dr. Anil Kukreja, Vice President - Medical Affairs and Regulatory, AstraZeneca; Ravinder Singh, VP & Head, consulting, CitiusTech; Girish Raghavan, Vice President of Digital Engineering and Technology, GE Healthcare; Satish Chandra J.E, VP, Renal Care Systems & Hardware, Site Head R&D, Baxter International; Sumit Ganguli, CEO, GAVS Technology; Shikha Pillai - Head Strategy, Siemens Healthineers; Debashish Roy - Digital Excellence & Strategic Initiatives, Pfizer, among others, participated in the event and shared their valuable inputs.

About CoE for IoT & AI

An initiative of the Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (MeitY) and K-tech, NASSCOM Centre of Excellence IoT& AI is a platform that aims to accelerate the development of the deep-tech industry, enabling inclusion and adoption of the emerging technologies in the ecosystem. CoE for the last six years has been enhancing the power of Artificial intelligence and the Internet of things to bring unprecedented opportunities for Industry, Startups, and Academia.