Ayushman Bharat Mission’s implementing agency National Health Authority (NHA) has entered into a partnership with NATHEALTH. Dr Sudarshan Ballal, President, NATHEALTH talk about how this collaboration will enable the fulfillment of Ayushman Bharat goals, in an exclusive interaction with Sanjiv Das
Tell us more about the NHA -NATHEALTH tie-up and how it would help boost the Ayushman Bharat scheme?
The world’s largest government-run health insurance scheme Pradhan Mantri Jan ArogyaYojana (PM-JAY) under Ayushman Bharat Mission is completing a year of its successful implementation with positive outcomes in September this year. Realising the critical role of technology disruptions, Ayushman Bharat Mission’s implementing agency National Health Authority (NHA) has entered into a partnership with NATHEALTH to enable a seamless pathway that streamlines all innovations ensuring that it scales and increases the efficacy of PM-JAY service delivery. The healthcare sector is now decoding the potential of new technologies, solutions, delivery system and medical supply chain among others. Innovations would finally empower people with quality, access and affordability. The government has realised the urgent need to take the lead in encouraging and driving innovations. With this partnership, we are preparing to take the scheme to the next level. And for this, the scheme needs to be driven by technology disruption or innovations.
The collaboration provides an industry interface for testing innovations; providing mentorship and creating channels for facilitating support required for scaling these innovations. This is expected to bolster NHA’s effectiveness in implementing its innovation strategy, which is aligned with its vision of ‘Health for All’. Health startups have been driving innovations in the country and these innovators would help to shape the future of healthcare. For better outcomes, the industry needs to provide mentorship and market support to them.
What type of inputs will NATHEALTH provide to NHA and various state governments?
For NHA and various state governments, we have identified focus areas and inputs will be based on specific requirements. Value-based healthcare, efficient management of population health, better insurance administration, adoption of digital health, data analytics and operational excellence for service delivery of healthcare schemes have emerged key areas to drive the growth of the sector. Our inputs will be based on these key areas.
What goals did NATHEALTH chalk out to make Ayushman Bharat a success?
First of all, NATHEALTH, being a multi-stakeholder healthcare body, ensured engagement of all stakeholders to move forward in a collaborative spirit to achieve set goals under the Ayushman Bharat. Building a strong delivery network, with wide participation by the private sector, was very critical for successful implementation of the scheme and NATHEALTH moved ahead in this spirit with NHA towards the fulfillment of Ayushman Bharat goals.
Is NATHEALTH going to facilitate more tie-ups with the government for the Ayushman Bharat scheme?
We remain open to the possibility.
NATHEALTH also partnered with NASSCOM to ensure better delivery in healthcare. How will the partnership promote technology-enabled healthcare products and solutions for the Indian market?
NATHEALTH and NASSCOM have come together to innovate and create scalable models for healthcare delivery. The partnership is with NASSCOM’s Centre of Excellence for the Internet of Things (CoE IoT). The aim is to enable the sector to deploy emerging technologies, to ensure better delivery of healthcare. This will be possible if health startups can leverage access to capital, mentorship, industry partnerships, and technology support. The collaboration would go a long way to create a robust ecosystem for the healthcare sector and innovation would provide new momentum in terms of clinical outcomes, transparency, patient safety, supply-chain management and standardisation of population health services with the help of new technologies. Through this collaboration, NATHEALTH and CoE have identified some areas of collaboration, which would promote efficient, accessible and easily available technology-enabled products and solutions for the citizens of India. The initiative will be supported by our members, networks, and brand. NATHEALTH aims to provide support to innovation through co-creation programme with specialised focus on IoT, AI, Robotics, AR/VR, Blockchain technologies that have a positive impact.