AMCHAM’s 9th Healthcare Conference was held on August 27th on a virtual platform with the theme ‘Challenges in Digital Healthcare’ with an underlying focus on healthcare for all – affordability, accessibility, awareness. The inaugural session was opened by Mr. Prakash Bodla, Chairman – Hyderbad Chapter, AMCHAM and Managing Director, Carrier Technologies India Ltd. He welcomed the gathering and spoke on the importance of digital health, staying ahead of the curve in terms of digital strategy and throwing a mix of innovation into healthcare and hoped the conference would not only define the areas of action but also propose strategies for accomplishing those objectives.

The guest of honor Consul General Joel Reifman, U.S. Consulate General Hyderabad spoke on the accelerating need for healthcare and bringing state-of-the-art healthcare and how the U.S.-India partnership had continued enhancing during COVID times. Mr. Mani Prakash, VP Enterprise R&D, Medtronic spoke on data enabled healthcare opportunities and how artificial intelligence, robotic-assisted surgery, and data analytics are creating a bold new era in personalized medicine. He touched on how smaller devices, enhanced visualization and super charged batteries support early detection and treatment. It’s clear that innovations will drive opportunities in healthcare with data enabled innovation is the future of healthcare.

This was followed by two panel discussions. Panel 1, Technology & Patient Centeredness, was moderated by Mr. Ritesh Dogra AVP, Indegene and supported by Mr. Divya Prakash Joshi of Medtronic, Mr. Vivek Srivastava of Healthcare @Home and Mr. Ashwin Naik of Manah Wellness (dealing with mental health). The panel spoke on the interoperability, interconnectivity and interplay needed between technology and stake holders and how patients of the future will control healthcare technologies that would drive healthcare outside hospitals. Digital wellness is now mainstream and collaboration is the key.

Panel 2, Tech Innovation in Healthcare, was moderated by Dr. Ambuj Chaturvedi, Sr. VP, IKP Knowledge Park supported by Mr. Karthik Duddala of Parexel, Ms. Neelima Dwivedi of MSD, Mr. Ratan Jalan of Medium Consulting and Mr. Aakash Ganju of Saathealth. With technology as an import part of healthcare, the panel discussed how health-tech should learn from consumer tech, how the PPP model will drive digital healthcare and help explore different partnership models. The panel agreed that healthcare will have to work on capability building and training programs.