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New Delhi: India must celebrate its healthcare achievements while setting ambitious goals for equity, access, and preventive care as the nation builds the vision of Viksit Bharat, said Dr. Sangita Reddy, Joint Managing Director of Apollo Hospitals. She emphasised that healthcare should not be viewed merely as an industry or sector, but as “the soul of society.”
In her plenary address, Dr Reddy said, “We cannot develop society unless we have strong healthcare. Only when healthcare is placed on a pedestal will we truly be able to live up to the promise and capability of our sector,” Dr. Reddy said.
Reflecting on India’s progress, she recalled milestones such as Apollo’s founding in 1983, early adoption of telemedicine in 2000, and the growth of advanced procedures such as robotic surgery and heart transplants. She noted that while healthcare has always been hectic, the pace of change has now accelerated to unprecedented levels. “What used to take years to become mainstream is now happening in months. Today’s miracles are tomorrow’s mainstay treatment,” she said.
Dr. Reddy highlighted that India’s healthcare landscape presents both complexity and opportunity. For large hospital groups, challenges include managing human resources, scaling efficiency, and ensuring quality. At the same time, billions of dollars in investments, IPOs, and venture capital are fueling growth.
“Just as India became the pharmacy of the world, we must now aim to become the advanced healthcare provider to the world—finding cures for cancer, reducing transplant wait times, and leading differently,” she said.
She contrasted India’s cutting-edge hospitals with persistent inequities. “While we can do robotic surgeries and advanced heart transplants, the reality is also that 23 out of 1,000 Indian children die before the age of five. Each statistic is an opportunity to change lives and histories,” she stressed.
Apollo, she noted, has invested in extending care to underserved regions through its REACH program—Rural Accessibility to Quality Healthcare—establishing hospitals in tier 2, 3, and 4 towns such as Karur, Aragonda, and Karaikudi. “We perform bypass surgeries there with the same outcomes, quality monitoring, IT systems, and materials as in Chennai or Delhi,” she said.
Dr. Reddy praised government efforts to expand medical colleges and regulate nursing schools, predicting that workforce shortages could ease in the next 3–5 years. However, she cautioned that quality must remain paramount. “The reputation of the Indian clinician exists because of the quality of training. Can we scale without losing that?” she asked, adding that digital technology and AI must be leveraged to disseminate knowledge without compromising standards.
Quoting her father, Apollo Chairman Dr. Prathap C. Reddy, she said: “The path from your super intelligent brain to your very skilled hands has to travel through your heart.” Retaining humanity in healthcare, she said, was critical.
Arguing that “we cannot fix what we cannot measure,” Dr. Reddy called for improved health data collection across rural and urban populations. She cited a recent urology paper that found prostate PSA test values must be adjusted 20% lower for Indian patients compared to Western standards. “Unless we feed in the right, equitable data, India cannot lead global research and discovery,” she said.
She underscored the transformative role of AI across Apollo Hospitals, An AI-powered tuberculosis detection engine validated in the US and China, Risk models for cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and renal conditions, Generative AI tools creating discharge summaries, reducing cycle times and hospital stay durations.
Added that over 20,000 robotic surgeries conducted, and 40,000 patients remotely monitored using IoMT devices.
Significantly, AI-enabled early warning systems have cut code blue calls in Apollo hospitals by over 50%. “The question is not how AI will change, but how we can enable ourselves with AI to serve humanity at greater scale and deeper impact,” she said.
Dr. Reddy urged for policies that position healthcare as critical infrastructure, on par with IT, which transformed India into a global hub. “If IT could contribute billions to India’s economy, why not healthcare?” she asked. She advocated for federated data platforms, regulations that empower rather than isolate, and the creation of a healthcare equivalent of UPI to drive digital public infrastructure.
Equity, she emphasised, remains non-negotiable: “No child should be denied care because of their pin code. No woman should face delayed diagnosis because she could not download an app.”
Dr. Reddy issued a strong call to shift focus from treatment to prevention, particularly for non-communicable diseases. “Almost everyone knows someone under 35 who has had a heart attack. Something is happening out there,” she warned. Proactive health check-ups, when done correctly, could catch heart disease and cancers at stage one, reducing costs and saving lives.
“Health checkups are not a business model. They are proactive tools that save lives at one-tenth the cost,” she stressed.
Dr. Reddy outlined India’s potential global leadership role in healthcare under the “HEAL in India” initiative envisioned by the Prime Minister. She expanded the vision into “HEAL from India,” enabling remote care globally, and “HEAL by India,” where India’s youth workforce can serve international healthcare needs.
“With 10 million youth entering the workforce every year, we must train and align degrees to global standards. We are not disadvantaged—we are at the cusp of one of the greatest opportunities for our country and the world: healthcare accessibility at scale,” she said.
“Let us dream of moonshots not just vaccines, but a cancer-free world. Let India lead not only in pharmaceuticals, but in digital therapeutics, clinical AI, and preventive healthcare,” she concluded.
