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Indian healthtech is currently in a nascent stage with just US$1.9B (~1 per cent of the overall healthtech market) but is becoming an integral part of the overall healthcare ecosystem.
The healthcare sector booming during a worldwide pandemic shouldn’t come as a surprise, right? And yet most countries saw their healthcare systems brought down to their knees if not completely collapse under the crushing and ruthless weight of the pandemic. As infection rates rise and fall, as vaccine drives are undertaken at breakneck speed, as the countries around the world watch their healthcare systems pushed to the brink once again, the question arises, how did we even manage to get so far? In a pandemic that has managed overwhelm the entire world. That has manged to undermine even the strongest of nations, in what will go down in history as the greatest healthcare crisis in the modern world, it remains nothing short of a miracle that successful vaccines have been developed under a year. That healthcare systems around the world continue to cater to patients even as they deal with an ongoing global healthcare crisis. The factor that has enable this is tech. More specifically, health tech.
Healthtech is one of the fastest-growing industry vertical despite the fact that it accounts for only 1 per cent of the sector. According to a recent report by IAMAI-Praxis Indian Healthtech industry is set to grow at 39 per cent for the next few years.
It goes without saying that the pandemic has been a huge a catalyst to the growth of the sector. According to the IAMAI Praxis, the rapid growth in Healthtech sector would be driven by the following:
The high disparity in the availability of healthcare services and infrastructure between rural and urban areas means that often rural areas or even Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities have limited accessibility to good healthcare services. Telemedicine and e-consultations allow this gap to bridged easily, giving patients easy and quick access to doctors and medical services.
Over the years, the Modi government has taken several measures to promote better healthcare services to the masses, from the launch of Ayushman Bharat to the recent increase in healthcare allocation, all these policies have helped paved the path to facilitating better healthcare services. Private players such as Apollo hospitals, Fortis etc have also played a huge part in promoting and facilitating greater medical services. This increase in focus of existing players has in turn helped in down streaming costs and providing several options to the masses.
Expectedly the investors have become active in this sector and have invested over 3 billion USD between 2014 and 2019. Indian Healthtech is currently in a nascent stage with just US$1.9B (~1% of the overall Healthtech market) but is becoming an integral part of the overall healthcare ecosystem. With 5g internet expected to be launched at the end of 2021 a whole lot of new avenues like telesurgery, haptic remote examination will open up, offering further investment options.