Global Health Tech Summit, 2020: Bridging gaps and leveraging innovation for transformation of healthcare in India | Education News,The Indian Express

The Punjab Chamber of Commerce and Industries (PCCI), under its global initiative World Punjabi Business Forum (WPBF), organised a virtual Global Health Tech Summit on Aug 31, 2020. This event was attended by hundreds of innovative thinkers across healthcare, technology players and beyond to confront the most challenging dilemmas in healthcare and uncover new solutions. The theme of the summit was “Bridging Gaps: Leveraging Innovation for transformation of Healthcare in India”.

The goal was to fill the gap between individuals and enterprises committed to advancing impactful innovations. Distinguished doctors, institutions, hospitals, start-ups, innovators, academic institutions and global funds from around the world were among panellists and participants. The Summit was held under the backdrop of these critical times of covid-19 and ongoing GOI’s effort to digitalise national health services. The Global Health Tech Summit explored the topic with an eye towards enabling business leaders, doctors and stakeholders with practical guidance they can use to get the most out of digital health.

Addressing the galaxy of luminaries from health, technology and academic, Nitin Pangotra, DG Punjab Chamber of commerce and Industries (PCCI) in his opening remarks warmly welcomed senior leaders, major healthcare professionals and companies, along with selected innovators, investors, academics and start-up founders in the global summit. He said, “The purpose of the summit is to build a profound ecosystem in health tech so that a global platform can be built for knowledge-sharing, to explore best practices, deliver practical tools, and disseminate useful information to industry leaders around the topic of digital tech in healthcare. This forum has been institutionalised to integrate and aggregate all stakeholders and provide them a platform for seamless interactions and a launch pad for innovators and start-ups in the health domain for transforming the health delivery system in India and to provide solutions to the world.”

Among the imminent speakers were Dr Vishal Upadhyay, an orthopaedic surgeon from UK and CEO Agile healthcare, who is disrupting the primary health care sector with his robust tech-based solution. He brought up how Covid-19 has exposed the vulnerabilities of the global health care system and as an urgent solution, use of modern technologies and digital services offer an innovative way for monitoring and delivery of health and well-being. He offered a tech solution as “smart care” for transforming primary health care services.

Dr D S Rana, Chairman, Sir Ganga ram Hospital, New Delhi underlined the role of technology in hospital and patient management in his talk and discussed the need of future partnerships between innovators and medical professionals for building comprehensive health solutions.

Dr John Wynn Jones, UK, a global expert of Rural Healthcare emphasised on digitalization and innovation as a key in delivering healthcare in rural areas. He also highlighted the historical role of India in global health care. He said that India has always been ahead of the world and also quoted from the edicts of Ashoka (3^rd century), “In and outside his dominions, Priyadarshini Ashoka has arranged for medical treatment of man and beast.”

Among the esteemed panelists was Mahendra Penumathsa, founder of US-based Unytalk, who has extensively worked to leverage and build robust technology solutions around healthcare. He accentuated the issue of digital technology adaptability in rural areas.

Dr Sunil Mehra, Professor of Clinical Medicine at Mt. Sinai School of medicine was among the distinguished panelists who focused on technological solutions for affordable and accessible health care in India.

Sandeep Rana, ex-Cisco Systems and Founder of Xbode, an Indian tech startup, working to create unique smart healthcare solutions webbed around “Smart Home” to provide patients a real time access to the doctors and hospitals at home. In his view, innovation in digital health care is highly required to help reduce inefficiencies in healthcare delivery, improving access, reducing costs, increasing quality of care, making our health services more patient-centric, personalising medicine for each patient’s unique needs.

The Summit was a profound initiative by PCCI to explore gaps and to enable in building healthcare solutions not just for India but for the world through collaborative approach by bringing all stakeholders on a platform.

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