Think of any industry in India. Chances are that it is undergoing a transformation—powered by technology and most probably triggered by the pandemic. That’s especially true for two industries critical to you and me—healthcare and pharma. “The use of tech in the Indian pharma sector is still nascent compared to global standards… There are several areas where Indian firms are working with global consulting and IT services companies. These include supply chain efficiencies, vendor and procurement management, reduction of product rejection or quality improvement, etc.,” says Navroz Mahudawala, MD of Candle Partners, an investment banking advisory firm with experience in health sciences.
With the adoption of cloud backed by modern tech such as AI, machine learning (ML) and data analytics, the Indian healthcare and pharma industry is undergoing quick digital transformation, say experts. This has intensified the demand for cloud computing services, big data analytics and other digital solutions that will help enterprises and governments improve everything from service delivery to database management and R&D processes to drug discovery and production, among other aspects of the industry.
Riding on these trends, some of the biggest names in the cloud space, including Amazon, Microsoft and Google, are lining up to offer their cloud-based services to healthcare and pharma sector players. “Today, India is one of the largest and most exciting markets for tech companies to build. And if you look at the potential for cloud, all the cloud penetration in India is still in single digits,” says Puneet Chandok, President of Amazon Web Services (AWS) India and South Asia.
So, how did it all begin? Let’s go back to the initial days of Covid-19, when the world was in the throes of a lockdown. While outpatient departments in hospitals and clinics around India were either closed or swamped with patients, the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing worked with AWS to build and launch the eSanjeevaniOPD (National Teleconsultation Service) in just 19 days. The AWS platform was also adopted to design and deploy Co-WIN, the government’s Covid-19 vaccination platform, through which India rolled out one of the largest vaccination programmes in the world.
Stakeholders believe Covid-19 accelerated digital transformation across public sector bodies by three to five years and led to unprecedented levels of digital engagement with citizens. Now, citizens expect the same kind of experience from the public sector that they expect from platforms like Netflix. “This has prompted public sector organisations to transform how they deliver services to citizens. The cloud has become the bedrock of digital innovation programmes and ‘mission mode projects’ of the Indian government,” says Max Peterson, Vice President of Worldwide Public Sector at AWS.
For instance, the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM), launched in September 2021, uses cloud-based solutions, among other tech, to host a database of citizens’ health records identifiable with a unique digital ID that can be shared with all service providers on the platform. “Post the success of the Co-WIN app and digital ID initiative, overall demand for cloud-native solutions has increased significantly,” says Ram Deshpande, Partner for Digital Advisory and Technology Transformation at EY India.
It’s not just the government pushing health initiatives; cloud-based solutions have found wide usage among India’s health and pharma players. Currently valued at $50 billion, the Indian pharma industry is expected to reach $65 billion by 2024 and $130 billion by 2030, according to India Brand Equity Foundation. India is also a major exporter of drugs, supplying low-cost medicines to over 200 countries. Plus, it is the world’s largest generic drug supplier by volume, making up 20 per cent of global pharma exports in FY22.
It is in this backdrop that pharma firms in India are making a beeline for cloud-based tech solutions. For instance, companies like Dr. Reddy’s and Pfizer have adopted the AWS platform, while Lupin is using Microsoft’s Azure for an array of services ranging from data analytics to generating insights. “The intent of all these [cloud computing services] essentially is to reduce costs in the longer run and innovate rapidly, thus enhancing the route to market for new products,” says Mahudawala of Candle Partners.
Pharma firms are using cloud-based solutions for a number of purposes. For instance, Swiss pharma major Novartis has tied up with AWS to build an enterprise-wide data and analytics platform called Insight Centers to provide real-time visibility across its network of manufacturing operations and distribution centres. Similarly, New Delhi-based Mankind Pharma is collaborating with Accenture to improve business agility, performance and operational efficiency. “For pharma companies, cloud platforms and other advanced tech help streamline workloads and reduce costs. Going beyond storage, cloud computing addresses significant privacy, security and compliance issues that the sector faces,” says Debashish Roy, Director and Head of Digital Innovation, Customer Experience and External Partnerships at pharma major Pfizer.
But that’s not all. With the government’s support for domestic biotechnology research and drug discovery, these segments are also seeing renewed focus from pharma majors armed with cloud-based solutions. “AI-enabled drug discovery models can eliminate months and years from the research process, which can reduce the ‘time to develop’ a drug and accelerate the ‘time to treatment’ for an individual patient,” says Bikram Singh Bedi, MD of Google Cloud for India Region. He cites the example of AlphaFold2 by Google’s Deep Mind unit, which leverages AI to predict effective protein shapes for new drugs, to explain how pharma firms can leverage this kind of collaboration.
Vas Narasimhan, Global CEO of Novartis, says this kind of R&D is here to stay. “Clearly, our industry [pharma] is getting reshaped. Tech such as AI and data science are going to impact drug discovery in the long run. These are tools to accelerate drug discovery.”
Just like pharma firms, healthcare service providers have also taken to tech- and cloud-based solutions in a big way. For instance, Apollo Hospitals Enterprise is using Google Cloud’s analytical systems to manage data of over 14 million patients and analyse their health patterns. This helps doctors provide data-driven clinical insights. “We are also working closely with Manipal Hospitals to improve patient care, clinician experiences, and improve the hospital chain’s network efficiency. Manipal Hospitals is leveraging Google Cloud to enable virtual care services across its chain of hospitals in the country, creating a new e-pharmacy platform that allows patients to order medicines directly from the hospital, and building remote patient monitoring to improve overall care,” says Bedi.
With cloud platforms and tech firms betting big on the Indian healthcare sector, it offers a significant opportunity for both to provide innovative solutions for improved healthcare outcomes, reduced costs for patients and hospitals. For instance, hospital chain Fortis Healthcare is using Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare for internal and service delivery purposes. Tom McGuinness, Corporate Vice President of Global Healthcare & Life Sciences at Microsoft, says the solution provides integrated AI capabilities at scale to make it easier to improve the entire experience.
Then there are the new kids on the block—tech-based start-ups in the medical and pharma space. Chandok of AWS says it is working with several start-ups like Dozee—which provides an AI-based contactless and continuous remote patient monitoring and early warning system—and Practo, which provides services ranging from teleconsultations and booking appointments to lab tests and surgeries.
Even tech giant Apple is eyeing India for its talent pool in research and start-ups. “We are looking for amazing opportunities in healthcare in India and we are really excited,” says Sumbul Desai, Vice President of Health at Apple.
But why are giants like Apple and Amazon so gung-ho about healthtech start-ups in India? The answer lies in the rapid rise of non-communicable diseases (NCD) such as cancer, diabetes, stroke and obesity. And, the rise of preventive healthtech start-ups that are working on solutions to tackle them. According to a study by the Indian Council of Medical Research, NCDs’ contribution to all deaths in India increased to 61.8 per cent in 2016 from 37.9 per cent in 1990. That has shot up to 70 per cent in 2022, per independent data platform Statista. And to combat this, there were as many as 7,849 health-tech start-ups in India as on January 11, 2023, according to private market data provider Tracxn. A joint report by Redseer Strategy Consultants, Chiratae Ventures and AWS states that the Indian preventive healthcare market is expected to grow from $93 billion in 2021 to $197 billion by 2025, at a CAGR of 22 per cent. Comparatively, the curative healthcare segment, which constituted 64 per cent of the total healthcare spends in India in 2021-22, is growing at 15 per cent.
Amit Kumar Verma, CTO of Practo, says the past one year has been a defining moment for the Indian healthcare and healthtech sector. “Start-ups across all stages are looking for cost optimisation solutions. [And] start-ups want to focus on automation and have more managed services so that they are able to be more technically efficient,” says Kumara Raghavan, Head of Start-ups at AWS India.
Then there’s HealthifyMe, which leverages various AWS services, including AI&ML, hosting, search, monitoring, and alerting. “The possibilities are definitely exciting for platform companies like AWS to help enable start-ups across sectors,” says Abhijit Khasnis, Vice President of Engineering at HealthifyMe.
For you and me, all this means better healthcare services and medicines at reduced costs. Here’s to (tech-powered) good health.
@neetu_csharma