Message from Lord Prior Of Brampton (Chair, NHS England)
Welcome to the UK India Virtual Healthcare Mission 2020. This is our first virtual healthcare event to India, building on the success of trade delegations visiting India over the last four years. I am very pleased to bring you a select group of British healthcare innovators in digital health, smart diagnostics and home-care technology, for both a Covid and a post-Covid world.
Innovation in healthcare is a key priority for healthcare providers in the UK and India, especially in the testing times of an international pandemic. We must respond to the need to make services accessible and safe as well as to meet the vastly increased demand for testing, treatment and care as the numbers of people infected by Covid 19 increase.This comes against a background of a fast-growing Indian healthcare sector which is projected to grow to USD $372bn by 2022. This includes a hospital industry which is expected to increase at a rate of 16-17% and a home healthcare market which is expected to grow by 19.2% as demand for primary, post-operative and geriatric care increases with improving technologies.
Digital intervention in healthcare is expected to drive much of the industry in both our countries and Covid 19 has accelerated this trend. As well as moving most medical consultations online in the NHS, we have seen many digital health companies adapt their systems to a meet the need of both acute and long-term Covid patients. Early in the pandemic, NHSX, our digital transformation unit called on all innovators who could support the elderly, vulnerable and self-isolating during COVID-19 to apply for government funding to test their solution. This TechForce 19 enabled 18 companies to accelerate the deployment and adoption of relevant technologies, covering patient monitoring, long term care and home visiting.
The applications of AI in the healthcare space in India will be worth USD 6bn by 2021, with telemedicine experiencing a 20% growth rate and similar high growth in diagnostic and point of care services.
This event is an excellent opportunity to present UK innovation in Healthcare which has been forged in the NHS (the world’s largest single payer health system) and is being taken forward by our Long Term Plan for transforming the NHS to meet the demands of the next ten years. We look forward to exploring business collaborations through the B2B meetings and to develop contacts with key stakeholders from the Indian healthcare industry. We have companies offering wellness solutions, digital diagnostics, digital triage and disease management, online consultation systems and hospital and remote care monitoring. These cover most common diseases including heart disease and stroke, cancer, COPD, asthma as well as paediatric conditions.
All healthcare systems face similar problems: affordability, workforce shortages, rising expectations, growing demand and now a pandemic. Technology will not solve these problems alone, but it can make a big difference. We would like to work with government and business in India to share our experiences and to learn from yours.
Message from Harjinder Kang (Director Healthcare, Life Sciences & Bio Economy, Department for International Trade)
I am delighted to welcome you to this trade mission bringing together a great combination of participants: the UK delegation of innovators, leading Indian healthcare and life sciences organisations, and excellent expert speakers from both our nations.
Digital health has risen to meet the global challenges of delivering healthcare in a world with the ever-increasing threat of non-communicable diseases and the pandemic of COVID-19.We are increasingly utilising the value of data in enabling us to better understand diseases, manage population health, identify patient segments at risk, support the discovery of treatments and create diagnostic tools using artificial intelligence. For instance, our UK Biobank collects the health and treatment data of half a million people and is accessed by researchers all over the world. Our hospital and population statistics going back decades tell us about the activity in hospitals and the clinical and patient related outcomes. Our research and development ecosystem includes organisations such as Health Data Research UK which relies on these fantastic data resources as well as novel platforms like NHS DigiTrials to vastly accelerate and lower the cost of clinical trials which are currently involved in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic and other major health challenges.
These examples are, of course, just a small number of the many opportunities that exist to learn from each other. Whether it be the use of AI, wearables and self-management apps, the accelerating progress in 3D printing, sophisticated simulation programmes for training staff, predictive analytics or personalised medicine, there is little doubt that both of our health systems will transform radically over the next decade.
Such technology and innovation is going to be instrumental in enabling us to achieve our aspirations to deliver quality care, improve prevention, empower citizens, safeguard patients, maximise efficiency, and reduce cost. Our belief as UK Government is that by working closely with India and other valued partners, we can tackle our greatest challenges and succeed.
I am delighted to support the UK delegation whose wide-ranging offers have impressive track records of results. I wish them every success in exploring long term partnerships in India, which will further strengthen our bilateral healthcare ties and help us take our healthcare systems into the future.
