A unique journey of inspiring moonshots in healthcare: InnoHEALTH 2018

InnoHEALTH 2018 brought a unique experience for speakers, delegates and exhibitors with a highlevel networking event coupled with exchange of ideas and solutions. The event came into being with two parallel workshops on 3rd and 4th of October 2018, by renowned experts from Finland, a country which has reinvented itself in just one short century with the stateof-the-art healthcare among the OECD countries and UK; Finland’s healthcare system was ranked the best in the world overall and in the categories like quality of care, access to care, efficiency and equity.

The third InnoHEALTH conference on Inspiring Moonshots in Healthcare was the latest milestone in the series of conferences held since 2016 on quality and cost optimization. A total of 250 delegates participated in this two-day international conference, including prominent speakers and member state representatives of international organizations. The rising concerns about the increasing costs and availability of health and medical facilities was given a prime platform at the conference. The mission was to bring the top healthcare experts around the world, with all the possible stakeholders of health sector, and deliberate on interventions, to bring down the cost of healthcare delivery and improve the quality of care.

The opening speech by Surgeon (R) Admiral Dr. V K Singh gave a brief overview of the current technology and scenario on the healthcare innovations and delivery. He presented his idea of 3 ‘P’s i.e. pain, (of) patient, (of) provider to deliver healthcare at an optimum cost, as well as scaling-up the availability of care. InnoHEALTH 2018 dedicated this year’s theme to the ‘missile man’ the former President of India, Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam and his vision. Mr. Srijan Pal Singh, a special invitee to the inaugural session, shared his experiences with Dr. Kalam in the healthcare context. The theme of inspiring moonshots would have been incomplete without an inspiring context from India. Hence, the organizing team innovatively captured the inspiring moonshots in healthcare of all the delegates.Dr. Singh in his closing remarks dedicated the InnoHEALTH 2018 conference to the vision of Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam towards country’s health sector. Sweden being the country partner, H.E. Klas Molin, Ambassador of Sweden to India, shared his thoughts about the Indo-Swedish partnership focusing on innovations and the work done in the health sector. He also mentioned the current examples and future possibilities for India and Sweden to cooperate and highlighted the importance of prevention as the secret of healthcare.

As we all know, the current times are very difficult for the Indian health sector. The anxiety in civil society with the rising cost of delivery and slippages in quality of healthcare delivery is well-known. On the other hand, rising epidemics like lifestyle diseases require a focus on preventive rather than curative approach. Hence, we need to reassess the priorities at the level of an individual, family and society, on how we are looking at the topic of health in the country. Dr. Anil Kumar Gupta, a visiting faculty at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad and Founder of Honey Bee Network, gave the keynote address for the inaugural session and looked at the challenges in the areas of health, provided concrete examples and direction to the InnoHEALTH audience by emphasizing on the inclusiveness of stakeholders when designing solutions.

The conference included series of structured panel discussionswith stakeholders and experts in the fields of health facilitating the discussions.

One such session was on the topic of Innovations for Hospitals in which the speakers reflected on different aspects of innovations, stressed on scaling-up of innovations. Chris Lloyd in his keynote address specified the need of bridging the gap between resources and patient needs, emphasized on taking-up the Singaporean model as the master plan. Another interesting session was on Make in India opportunities which emphasized on the issue of manufacturing medical devices in India highlighting the immense possibilities along with the hurdles under the initiative. A few sessions were dedicated towards universal health coverage and insurance led innovations. Recent policy aiming at Universal Health Coverage, launch of Ayushman Bharat by the Ministry of AYUSH were some of the key discussions in these sessions.

Aligning to its broader aim of bringing out innovations in healthcare and to celebrate and encourage innovation particularly in the healthcare sector, InnoHEALTH was back with the third segment of Young Innovators Award 2018. Out of 200+ nominations, the 5 most innovative nominations were called to present in front of a jury with a perfect blend of stakeholders of healthcare industry like investors, policymakers, academic and research experts and medical experts.

The first prize was bagged by the team which represented the excerpt of innovation in LIFEBOXby DevalKaria and Rohit S Nambiar. The second was bagged by Abhishek Venkataram and Sanidhya Rasiwasia for the innovation in surgical navigation system named NAVI. Dhananjay KVN who presented his innovation on voxel base analysis for Pediatric Brain Mapping bagged the third prize. The prize money was sponsored by InnoHEALTH. As the young innovators got the chance to showcase their innovations, the underlying concept was to empower these budding innovative companies with right advise and linkages. Some of the top experts from Indian health sector shared their feedback on how the companies should work on their India market strategy.

The Ultimate Solution for all Non- Communicable Diseases - a discussion which followed the inspiring meditation session, The Divine Google to Health and Happiness, by an Emeritus Scientist Dr. Satish Kumar Gupta, giving a platform to showcase the 3-dimensional approach to healthcare. Dr. Kumar, a renowned personality, has been awarded the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology for his contribution to medical sciences.

Another highlight of the conference, the session on Advances in Diagnostics, brought the top industry leaders together sharing their vision about the health sector and also showcasing promising start-ups and technologies. The panel represents various industry working in cutting edge research in radiology and diagnostics areas from India and Sweden.

InnoHEALTH 2018 brought together representatives from seven countries on a single platform for a panel discussion on EU-India collaboration in the Health Sector, start-up opportunities and challenges, providing insights on market development in India, including examples of reverse innovations from India to Europe and back along with legal and IPR challenges.

During the session on Digital Health - giving birth to new delivery models through Mobile, IoT, Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence, the panelists discussed the topic of digital in three different contexts; policy-makers, IT, Hospitals to an insurance marketplace.

The conference concluded on a note of the paradigm shift of healthcare technological advances. Healthcare delivery optimization, noncommunicable disease prevention, equitable access to health services and innovations were considered the broad strands on which the sessions were structured. But some specific areas of major concern such as Digital health, Make in India opportunities, EU-India collaboration, access and quality of care were also subject to in-depth analysis during the conference. Once again, the content richness and the highlevel networking opportunity was the limelight of the conference.

S Venkat Saketh is a graduate in mechanical engineering from Anna University. He is currently working as a business analyst with MixORG consulting Pvt Ltd.