The government is in the process of drafting a National Health Policy to meet the rising demand for sustainable healthcare across the country, Union health secretary Lov Verma stated. He was speaking at the two-day 'FICCI Heal 2014' conference in Delhi being organised by FICCI on the theme 'Innovation Enabling Access'.

The conference is focusing on opportunities and challenges to promote innovation which can change the current paradigms and move towards better, efficient and cheaper options for accessible, affordable and quality healthcare in India.

In his special address, Verma said that new systems will be put in place in the National Health Policy and the government may even consider setting up an Innovation Health Fund. He also urged the industry to compile the best practices and innovations of the industry and submit it to the Ministry for consideration.

Speaking on various government innovations, the health secretary said that the colour coded linen in hospitals is a simple method of differentiating various linen, hence reducing the risk of cross-infection. The coding should be followed by hospitals right up to district level healthcare centres, he suggested.

Ayush is another initiative of the government which has potential but has not been utilized to its full capacity till now. There is great scope for popularising alternative medicine and mainstreaming it with general medicine, he added.

The secretary also dwelt on the importance of electronic health records (EHRs) and thanked FICCI for supporting the government in this initiative. He urged the private and public sector to join hands and make the EHRs drive a success story across the country. Patient transport system and mobile medical unit are other efforts of the government to make healthcare accessible in remote areas.

Dr. A Didar Singh, Secretary General, FICCI, while supporting the central theme of the conference announced, "We propose to create a virtual pooling of industry CSR funds by creating IISH (Indian Industry in Solidarity for Health) Kosh to channelize funds into priority area in healthcare identified by the government. FICCI Health Services Committee is keen to work with the Health Ministry to develop a directory of healthcare activities based on the priorities of the government so that the CSR funds are channelized in the right direction to support National Health Assurance mandate of the government".

In her address, Dr Poonam Khetrapal Singh, Regional Director-SEARO, World Health Organization, emphasized the need for innovation to make healthcare affordable and accessible to all. The healthcare arena, she said, could be classed into three 'H'. There is the 'Hard-core' need for innovations in developing new drugs, vaccines and diagnostics. Then there is the 'Health Systems' innovation need such as the use of technologies such as mobile phones by health workers for patient referrals, event reporting and disease surveillance. Similarly, further innovation is needed in telehealth for tele-consultations and their scale up is quite clear. And finally there is need for 'Household' level innovations that should bring better health to people by themselves and their community efforts but supported by innovative approaches and relevant technologies that are sustainable.

She added that a new paradigm – frugal innovations – was rapidly gaining traction. This is technology and innovation that is simple and affordable but effective and sustainable to meet the needs of the economically disadvantage.

Dr Singh stated that one of the big drivers of change is the increased demand for effective and robust low-cost medical devices from emerging economies, notable China and India. With increased investments in health systems in China and India, there will be a market for such technologies. India's latest five-year plan includes a commitment to increasing the government's share of total healthcare expenditure by 2017 and, more importantly, it will move to a universal health assurance programme. Innovations in health (across all aspects) will definitely need to be a key feature to deliver on these initiatives.

Elaborating on the conference theme, Sangita Reddy, Chairperson, FICCI Health Services Committee & Joint Managing Director, Apollo Hospitals Group, said, "Across industries, disruptive innovations have brought forth greater efficiencies, efficacy, economy and higher quality. The healthcare sector too needs to nurture such innovations as they are the need of the hour. Our nation like most other across the world is standing at the precipice of crisis created by the burden of disease and woefully inadequate healthcare infrastructure.  Over the last four years, FICCI has been making sincere efforts to encourage health innovators offering solutions to deliver care more effectively while improving access and quality from the grassroots level."

Sunil Wadhwani, Founding Donor, Wadhwani Initiative for Sustainable Health, shared a five-point plan which could help in encouraging innovation in the sector. The first step is to identify the 300-500 most promising innovators from the pool of existing innovators and then they need to be supported for the next five to 10 years. To scale up the innovation, raising fund would be the next big step. Hence in two to three years' time, a fund of USD 200 million needs to be raised to support the identified innovators.

Wadhwani mentioned that there is a need to work closely with the state governments to improve the quality of primary healthcare and centres. There is also a need to create a national ecosystem for healthcare recognizing the innovators, entrepreneurs, and other stakeholders. Finally, a knowledge hub needs to be established.  

Expressing his views, on the medical technology sector, Dr GSK Velu, Co-Chair, FICCI Health Services Committee and Founder & MD, Trivitron Group of Companies, said that the medical technology segment needs more focus and attention in India due to very high import dependency and lack of large scale domestic manufacturing initiatives due to several challenges faced by local producers. Keeping in line with our new government's vision to make India self-reliant with local manufacturing initiatives, FICCI has partnered with EY to bring this comprehensive knowledge paper to showcase the challenges faced by this Industry and FICCI will be happy to work with the Government of India to create an ecosystem for making medical technology segment self-reliant by facilitating continuous interactions with various stakeholders in this Industry."

On the occasion, FICCI also released two knowledge papers on 'Healthcare Innovations and Domestic Manufacturing' and 'Medical Value Travel in India'.

Rajen Padukone, Co-Chair – FICCI Health Services Committee & Group President, Manipal Education and Medical Group, also shared the dais with the dignitaries at the inaugural session of the conference.