Health Tech 2019 – Technologies for Universal Healthcare was jointly organised by Medica Superspecialty Hospital and The Bengal Chamber of Commerce & Industry on 12th and 13thApril, 2019, in Kolkata.

Healthcare industry is undergoing rapid transformation especially in this disruptive era. Technology has become intrinsically related and linked to almost all facets of work flow within the healthcare systems to optimise and speed up efficiency as it affects all stake holders involved namely the patients, providers and payers. The system involves massive use and transfer of data among all stake holders. As the industry is edging towards being the fastest service centric sector, there is a gradual shift about using a centralised data to give the best to end users.

Dr. Alok Roy, Former President, The Bengal Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Chairman, Medica Group of Hospitals said, “The application of technology to radically improve performance and human care has become a trending topic for healthcare organisations across the globe. Digital technology is touching the lives of every human being today in one way or the other.”

Indrajit Sen, President, The Bengal Chamber stated, “Apart from providing the best healthcare facility to all patients, The Bengal Chamber IT committee proposes that both public and private healthcare systems adopt blockchain based Electronic Health Record (EHR) where entire summary, prescriptions, reports to the respective unique citizen id stored on the blockchain platform.”

The highlight of the opening day was the release of knowledge paper “Reimagining Health Information Exchange in India using Blockchain” drafted by PricewaterhouseCoopersPrivate Limited.

Arnab Basu, Chairperson, IT Committee, The Bengal Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Leader - Technology Consulting, PwC India said, "Indian healthcare is on the cusp of transformation by adopting the Ayushman Bharat and moving to attain the goal of Universal Health Care (UHC). It has been facing challenges of affordability, quality of care and availability of adequate skilled resources for a long time. Add to this, the various limitations of existing technology that has led to challenges around meaningful health information generation, ownership, storage, standardization, security and exchange. Blockchain offers a solution to these challenges by providing a trust enabled information exchange platforms for the healthcare ecosystem to generate, store, and exchange meaningful health information in a secured manner.”

Last year’s topic highlighted the significance of two emerging technologies – Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) in addressing some of the key challenges of healthcare like accessibility and affordability.

Some of the key participants were Kazuya Nakajo, Chief Director General, JETRO, New Delhi; Hubert Goffinet, Trade and Investment Commissioner, Embassy of Belgium to India; Dr Kunal Sarkar, Senior Vice Chairman and Senior Consultant Cardiac Surgeon, Medica Hospital among others.