India’s healthcare delivery model has come a long way and changed over time. It is now more digitized, patient-oriented, and developed. But there are still many challenges and expectations in the healthcare industry of India. In the Indian healthcare ecosystem, the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the massive supply-demand gap. 1 doctor, 2.5 nurses, and 3.5 beds per 1,000 population were recommended by the World Health Organisation, while India has 0.65 physicians, 1.3 nurses, and 1.3 hospital beds per 1,000 population. In terms of the distribution of the population of health workers across states and rural-urban environments, there is also a significant difference. The majority of physicians and nurses are concentrated in major cities, leaving a substantial gap in rural areas, regardless of the fact that demand is spread equally.  Urban centers are home to almost 70% of the doctors and almost 65% of the country’s hospital beds despite having less than 30% of the total population.

Investment in healthcare delivery is skewed

Since affordability has been the issue in the Indian market, by restricting the prices of cardiac drugs, heart stents, etc., the government has placed regulatory restrictions in place. This, in essence, put a lot of pressure on hospitals, as a result of which they started to minimise the cost of using technology, but at the same time dramatically decreased their investment in capacity building. According to VCCEdge, private equity investments in the healthcare sector over the last three years (2017-2019) were $5.31 billion over 348 deals before the pandemic, while CY 20 saw approximately half of the transaction value of $2.36 billion over 108 deals over the last three years. Of this, the overall deal value was drawn from pharmaceuticals. Compared to the global market, healthcare costs in India are lower, but affordability among the population is poor due to low health insurance coverage. Insurance brokers are expected to build creative insurance plans in such a way that they play a greater role in the various facets of the customer journey.

On the bright side, as it undergoes a drastic change to meet increasing demand in the aftermath of the pandemic, the outbreak of the pandemic has accelerated innovation within the sector; and with the introduction of technology, the gap is soon likely to be closed. A viable and creative business model is now being developed by Healthtech to fill the void. Healthcare services are moving to offer teleconsultation from hospitals and there is now a globally linked and interconnected ecosystem that is actually making healthcare more available.