Dr Mansukh Mandaviya, Minister of Health, and Family Welfare and Minister for Chemicals & Fertilizers, Government of India, delivered the keynote address as the Chief Guest at the IIMA Healthcare Summit themed "Catalysing Innovation - Start-up Ecosystem and Policy Research" held recently at the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIMA).

He stressed that the healthcare sector needs a greater number of doctors, robust infrastructure, adoption of technological advancements to reach the remotest areas of the country, and ample opportunities for startups to drive innovation and progress in the sector. 

Making the opening remarks at the IIMA Healthcare Summit, Professor Bharat Bhasker, Director, IIMA, said, “The Indian pharmaceutical industry is acknowledged as one of the largest and most efficient in the world today.  It has done a wonderful job of creating medicines and keeping the prices affordable not only in India but for the world, which has been a great support for the survival of humanity. Our strength in generics is incomparable globally."

Talking about the crucial role of startups in the healthcare sector, Pankaj R Patel, Chairperson, the IIMA Board of Governors, said, “Today we are seeing another wave of startups who have the ability to create new horizons of growth for the Indian healthcare industry. These healthcare startups can address the challenges that we are facing and greatly improve the quality and accessibility of healthcare in India. The Government of India has been championing innovation and entrepreneurship and has so far promoted almost 160 incubators, and nurtured about 12,000 startups, including 1600 women-led startups in India. Currently, India is home to about 2000 health tech companies or startups.”

Elaborating further he said, “One of the things we are trying to do here is to understand and learn from academia and take their support in terms of innovating new things. We need to create a qualified talent pool that is trained to think out of the box and innovate. We also need to create funding mechanisms and hubs for innovation, where the academic institutes and industry can exist and collaborate in this area of healthcare.”

An MoU exchange ceremony was also held during the inaugural session. Facilitated by the IIMA Endowment Fund, the MoU’s objective is to extend funding support for the Centre for Management of Health Services (CMHS) by IIMA’s PGP 1994 Batch. This will help the Centre to create a platform for advancing healthcare research, promoting knowledge dissemination, and driving positive change in the healthcare sector.

The Summit was organised by IIMA’s Alumni Special Interest Group (SIG) in Healthcare and the Centre for Management of Health Services (CMHS) at IIMA.