Ravindranath Kancherla on why most healthcare innovation never reaches patients and how India can change that

Dr. Ravindranath Kancherla has dedicated more than 40 years to improving healthcare, transitioning from a transplant surgeon to establishing a prominent network of tertiary-care hospitals, all while focusing on both outstanding patient care and effective system development. Kancherla has consistently maintained that healthcare outcomes depend more on the robustness of large-scale care delivery systems than on individual expertise. During his conversation with The Economic Times Digital, Kancherla shares insights on creating Global Hospitals, identifies systemic challenges to healthcare innovation, and explains Global HealthX's mission to turn patient-focused ideas into reality in India and globally. Edited excerpts.

Economic Times (ET): You began as a surgeon and went on to build hospitals. Looking back, what was the bigger challenge- pushing clinical boundaries or building systems that could sustain them?
Ravindranath Kancherla (RK): Pushing clinical boundaries was the more visible challenge. Building systems that could sustain them was far harder. As a surgeon, you are trained to solve for the patient in front of you. But early on, I realised that excellence in healthcare collapses if it depends on individuals alone. Great outcomes are the result of teams, processes and shared accountability.

Global Hospitals has been the first multi-organ transplant program in India, initiating complex procedures with making such care affordable and accessible to all. Building Global Hospitals taught me that the real work begins when you institutionalise outcomes; when quality care becomes the default, not the exception. Systems and not individuals determine access. Clinical innovation means little if it cannot be delivered reliably, affordably and at scale.


Healthcare doesn’t fail because of a lack of expertise; it fails when systems don’t allow that expertise, working together, to reach people.


ET: What was your core design philosophy while building Global Hospitals? Was it clinical outcomes, scale, or talent creation?
RK: It was all three, but in a very deliberate sequence. Clinical outcomes came first. Without uncompromising outcomes, scale is meaningless. In complex care, outcomes validate everything. If a hospital performs transplantation well, it signals that the underlying systems like protocols, infrastructure and teamwork, are functioning with precision.

Once outcomes were established, we built repeatable systems that could scale across geographies. Global Hospitals was founded on a philosophy of teamwork rather than individual efforts, which is why we were able to scale nationally. The presence of over 100 transplant centres nationwide today is a direct result of systemic innovations led by pioneers like Global Hospitals.

Talent creation was integral, not incremental. It is the only way to sustain both outcomes and scale. We invested deliberately in building specialist capacity because Global Hospitals was never intended to be a single centre of excellence, but a platform for multiplying excellence.


ET: After decades of building hospitals, you’ve now founded Global HealthX. What gap in the healthcare innovation journey did you feel was fundamentally broken?
RK: The most broken part of healthcare innovation is the distance between ideas and patients.

I saw extraordinary research, promising technologies and passionate founders across the world. Yet very few solutions reached clinical workflows or patients at scale. Accessibility was the common failure point globally, even in developed economies.

Innovation in healthcare does not fail because of lack of intelligence or intent. It fails because it is not built with clinical trust, real-world validation and deployment pathways in mind.

Global HealthX was born from this insight- to fix translation, not just invention and to move innovation from pilot to public impact. I believe innovation is not impact until it reaches the last mile.


ET: Many health tech ideas struggle to move from pilots to real-world adoption. In your experience, why does innovation fail to scale in healthcare?
RK: Because healthcare is not a sandbox; it is a trust-based system. Most innovations fail at three points: clinical validation, fit within real-world workflows and founder readiness for healthcare’s complexity. Hospitals don’t adopt ideas; they adopt confidence. Confidence that a solution improves outcomes, integrates seamlessly, remains affordable and does not add risk.

Usually innovation happens in silos, addressing isolated use cases instead of end-to-end healthcare pain points. Technology scales only when it solves real problems, works in integrated care environments, and can be delivered affordably at scale.

Founders often underestimate how long trust takes to earn and how easily it is lost. Healthcare demands evidence, patience and humility. That is why Global HealthX, as part of the larger Global Institute of Research and Innovation we are building, puts validation before velocity.


ET: Global HealthX combines a venture studio, accelerator and strategic capital. Why was it important to integrate all three instead of following a traditional VC or incubator model?
RK: Innovation in healthcare and life sciences does not move linearly, it moves systemically. A standalone accelerator cannot solve for scale. Capital without clinical integration creates valuation, not value. A venture studio without GTM pathways builds products in isolation.

Global HealthX integrates all three because healthcare needs a unified engine, one that aligns research, product design, clinical validation and go-to-market strategy under a single mission framework.

We are not capital-chasing or demo-day driven. Instead, we become institutional co-founders. Our success is measured by adoption, outcomes and access; not exits alone.


ET: You’ve positioned Hyderabad as a natural base for Global HealthX. What makes it uniquely suited for healthcare innovation compared to other global hubs?
RK: Hyderabad offers something rare: depth, diversity and deployment readiness in a single ecosystem. It brings together world-class clinicians, advanced hospitals and a strong base across pharma, biotechnology, life sciences and technology. The research ecosystem is equally compelling, anchored by institutions such as CCMB, CDFD and IIIT, which create a strong pipeline from discovery to application.

Most importantly, Hyderabad reflects the full complexity of real-world healthcare- across income groups, disease burdens and infrastructure realities, while still allowing rapid piloting and iteration.

If a solution works in Hyderabad, it can work anywhere. That makes it an ideal proving ground not just for India, but for global healthcare innovation.


ET: Global HealthX aims to bridge global research with emerging-market deployment. Why do you believe India can be a proving ground for solutions with global relevance?
RK: India compresses the world’s healthcare challenges into one geography. Cost sensitivity, scale, diversity and access gaps coexist here. Designing for India forces innovation to be efficient, adaptable and outcome driven. These are precisely the qualities global healthcare systems now need.

India should not be seen as a low-cost market; it should be seen as a high-learning and affordable market. Solutions built here are not inferior; they are often more resilient. I strongly believe if you design for India, you design for the future of global healthcare.


ET: As Chairman of Laurus Laboratories and a board member at ImmunoAct, you operate across pharma, biotech and advanced therapies. How should India balance cutting-edge innovation with affordability?
RK: Affordability is subjective, accessibility is not, and this is a challenge the entire world now faces. Innovation must be built for scale & reach, and India is uniquely positioned to demonstrate that cutting-edge science and affordability can coexist.

Rather than replicating global healthcare models that are expensive and increasingly unsustainable, we can reimagine manufacturing, clinical trials, delivery systems and regulatory pathways to enable access without compromising scientific rigour.

Scale helps democratise innovation. We were able to deliver transplants in India at nearly one-tenth the global cost because of economies of scale, integrated systems and process excellence. When advanced therapies are deployed at scale, costs fall and access expands.

The true balance is achieved when scientific ambition is matched by social intent; when innovation is designed not only to advance medicine, but to serve humanity.


ET: Healthcare systems worldwide are facing rising costs, fragmented innovation and access gaps. If you had to prioritise one systemic reform India must get right in the next decade, what would it be?
RK: India must get translational collaboration right; building a strong framework where public research institutions, private hospitals, clinicians and innovators work with shared incentives and trust.

Innovation cannot live in silos. Today, India spends roughly $40 per person on public healthcare, yet continues to face severe access gaps- not because of a lack of ideas or talent, but because research, clinical practice and deployment remain fragmented.

This is where the next decade becomes pivotal. With the advent of AI and more efficient technologies, India can dramatically lower the cost of innovation; from drug discovery and clinical trials to manufacturing and delivery. AI enables faster validation, smarter trials and more affordable R&D, making scale economically viable in ways that were not possible before.

The opportunity is to move from fragmented excellence to integrated impact. The future of healthcare will belong to ecosystems, not individual institutions and India is uniquely positioned to build those ecosystems at global scale.