The untapped healthcare opportunity

By
February 4th, 2021

healthcare innovation

Healthcare innovation is evolving beyond the boundaries of hospitals

Innovators have leveraged underlying opportunities during the pandemic.

Teladoc, a US based digital health company, grew 98% during 2020 to exceed US1$ Billion in revenues.

Saykara, US based AI company, developed a new voice assistant that listens to and understands the context of a patient-physician conversation without being prompted by voice commands and automatically documents the data in the EMR.

QIoT, a UK based connected health company, developed a smart inhaler that leverages AI and provides health professionals with an early warning of erratic or unexpected usage by patients.

Camomile Healthcare Ventures studied how large healthcare organizations (HCOs) in India approach healthcare innovation. We interviewed the top leaders in India to understand their views on innovation and whether they are looking at radical transformations to gain market leadership.

We have captured the insights in this note and also have put together what could be in store for the industry and why a new player may emerge as the winner in the long term.

 

Innovation, a key enabler to long term growth

To sustain growth, companies need consistent streams of new products, services, processes, and business models. This set of practices & processes that companies adopt to organize and encourage the development of new ideas is called innovation.

Innovation enables companies to transcend industry boundaries.

To enable long term growth through innovation, an organization needs to create and manage two completely antagonistic cultures simultaneously. It needs to explore the future while exploiting the present.

 

Leaders’ take on Innovation : Is it adequate?

Our interviews with the top healthcare leaders in India yielded a range of interventions, varying from tactical moves to radical transformatory views.

The results have been listed and categorized into the three types of innovation with the percentage of responses received in each category.

Riding the innovation wave

Most of the ideas discussed during the study are categorized under sustaining and efficiency innovation. Transformative innovation is an area that is not being given sufficient focus by healthcare leaders.

The findings indicate that hospitals in India are primarily focused on managing the present. Given the current pandemic crisis, this focus is expected to grow even further, as providers try to adapt to the post pandemic ecosystem. This highlights that there are significant opportunities for radical transformation in healthcare, that can be leveraged by organizations looking to make an impact.

The current healthcare sector is at a point of adapting to the ‘new normal’ and this adaptation process presents opportunities for transformative innovation such as digital health and healthcare analytics.

With some organizations being occupied with exploiting the present, others need to invest in exploring the future and be part of Indian healthcare’s growth story.

 

About Camomile Healthcare

Camomile Healthcare Ventures is a leading boutique healthcare advisory organization with strong expertise in India and emerging markets.

We would like to thank all the respondents who participated in the survey for providing their valuable inputs. If you would like to further discuss the insights of this report you may contact Mr. Raghava Rao, CEO and Executive Director, Camomile Healthcare Ventures

Email: raghava@camomilehealthcare.com