Making health care mobile: Shobana Kamineni says smartphones phones can be the disruptive tech India needs
Kamineni says she wants to use technology to make diagnosis more accurate.
By Shannon Tellis, ET Bureau | Updated:
BCCL
Apollo Hospitals’ Shobana Kamineni says our phones can be the disruptor that Indian health care needs.
What if your mobile phone could save your life? That’s the kind of disruptive health care technology Shobana Kamineni, executive vice-chair of Apollo Hospitals, wants to see in India.
“In India, we cannot build enough hospitals. When you start designing a hospital, by the time it’s built, it’s probably obsolete,” Kamineni said during a discussion on the challenges of Indian health care. During a recent trip to Israel, Kamineni saw how the mobile phone was being used to monitor blood sugar, blood pressure and a whole host of other parameters. “[The doctors] said your mobile phone has the highest computing and the best imaging so why reinvent that?” she said. “I think that is the disruptor technology — our mobile phone. It could be where the future of hospitals will move us.”
“When you start designing a hospital [in India], by the time it’s built, it’s probably obsolete”
Accurate but caring
Asked what the future of hospitals looks like, Kamineni replied, “It would be using technology to allow humans to diagnose fast and spend more time with the patients, because right now, it’s not enough.” According to Kamineni, diagnosis is the most frustrating experience for the patient, especially when they’re paying for it out of their own pockets. “You’ll find them saying, ‘Oh the doctors are going to get something out of it, they’re sending us for an MRI or asking us to do extra tests’. But we’re not solving for the 100 per cent, we’re solving for even that 1 per cent. If we miss it [and something happens] that for them is 100 per cent. So, I think hospitals of the future should be way more caring and clever and accurate about diagnosis.”
What if your mobile phone could save your life? That’s the kind of disruptive health care technology Shobana Kamineni, executive vice-chair of Apollo Hospitals, wants to see in India.
“In India, we cannot build enough hospitals. When you start designing a hospital, by the time it’s built, it’s probably obsolete,” Kamineni said during a discussion on the challenges of Indian health care. During a recent trip to Israel, Kamineni saw how the mobile phone was being used to monitor blood sugar, blood pressure and a whole host of other parameters. “[The doctors] said your mobile phone has the highest computing and the best imaging so why reinvent that?” she said. “I think that is the disruptor technology — our mobile phone. It could be where the future of hospitals will move us.”
“When you start designing a hospital [in India], by the time it’s built, it’s probably obsolete”
Accurate but caring
Asked what the future of hospitals looks like, Kamineni replied, “It would be using technology to allow humans to diagnose fast and spend more time with the patients, because right now, it’s not enough.” According to Kamineni, diagnosis is the most frustrating experience for the patient, especially when they’re paying for it out of their own pockets. “You’ll find them saying, ‘Oh the doctors are going to get something out of it, they’re sending us for an MRI or asking us to do extra tests’. But we’re not solving for the 100 per cent, we’re solving for even that 1 per cent. If we miss it [and something happens] that for them is 100 per cent. So, I think hospitals of the future should be way more caring and clever and accurate about diagnosis.”
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