Manufacturing Components For Medical Devices Big Challenge In India: Chaitanya Sarawate

The last few years have been quite unique for the healthcare industry because of Covid and as a result, certain portions of the market grew quite a bit such as testing, ventilators and equipment which were related to Covid, says Chaitanya Sarawate, President and CEO-India & South Asia, GE Healthcare and Managing Director, Wipro-GE.

He further delineates that presently the market is normalising and going through the regular trend of pre-pandemic growth adding that overall the Indian market is very strong, with many new hospitals and diagnostic centres coming up on the private side, and the government is also making a pretty significant push to build facilities or upgrade the existing facilities. "And whenever you upgrade facilities you are required to invest in medical technology which ensures that the market for us is in great shape," he adds.

Edited Excerpts

What are the key products that have seen an uptick in the Indian market for you?

From a healthcare lens, one has to look at the diseases which are significant contributors to morbidity and mortality, naturally, the investments are happening there. There is high mortality in cardiac care and as a result, a lot of investments are happening in screening, diagnosing and managing cardiac patients. There are also interventions which go along with them such as ECG machines or Cath labs which are also witnessing an uptick. 

Oncology is another area, as cancer is a significant illness and its incidence is also growing in India, so the equipment which can screen early whether they are mammograms for breast cancer or ultrasounds for diagnosing cancer or X-ray for lung cancer, all are seeing growth. 

Again going along with them, the devices for managing diseases are also growing such as PET-CT for oncology, and RT-CT for planning radiotherapy and a lot of growth is also being witnessed in MRIs which are applicable to neurology and orthopaedics. 

What are the key digital pillars in healthcare as per you and what will be their imperatives going forward?

For me, whether it is digital or non-digital it must solve a problem that exists. The problem that exists in India and across the world is that we don't have enough trained resources to be able to deliver healthcare and that's a reality. So, anything which enhances efficiency and allows a limited number of resources to diagnose or treat many more patients is the key asset. 

Artificial Intelligence (AI) allows faster diagnosis or faster scanning and as an example, we have AI applications which run with MRIs. Typically an MRI will require 30 minutes to scan which means that the number of patients that you can scan in a day is limited. 

Now with the AI application, you're able to cut down 50 per cent of the scan time, which means you have doubled the number of patients that can go through it. Therefore, AI automatically gives efficiency benefits and access benefits to the patient.

Another example is, if one does a lung scan, which is quite common whether it is for lung cancer or TB, today there are AI applications which are able to identify modules even earlier than the human eye, which means early diagnosis. And even when you don't have skilled professionals available, AI is able to help less skilled or less experienced people to make accurate decisions. Hence, digital applications today are solving problems related to efficiency and also quality of care. 

I believe the imperatives that these applications have going forward is to improve access, and quality and reduce the cost of healthcare. Secondly, these applications will also ensure interoperability across the healthcare system which will enable patients to avail a seamless healthcare experience. 

What according to you will be the use case of Chat GPT in the healthcare industry?

In healthcare, the primary motivation is to do no harm. Hence, any healthcare application before it comes. We allow the regulator to evaluate the risk and the benefit associated with its uses and that's the reason the Chat GPT application will not come immediately to healthcare. Although, it will have many other use cases in other fields. But in the long run, it can absolutely be leveraged in healthcare. As there are many mundane tasks that our limited resources of healthcare professionals do, some of those might get transferred to Chat GPT. 

Secondly, it can allow individual patients to ask questions from someone and get an answer, now whether that answer is viable or verified is what the regulators have to evaluate and allow its widespread use. Till that time, people will ask questions from Chat GPT. You can't stop it from happening but whether the information you get is verified or not is still a question. 

How do you think India can reduce its 85 per cent import dependency in medical devices?

We have been manufacturing in India for the last 30 years and have 4 manufacturing plants including one that is under the PLI scheme which ensures that we are able to get an incentive for manufacturing and export. So from a local manufacturing standpoint, we are well positioned, now to help the industry while the government is doing quite a bit by incentivising or by duty reductions etc. The part which can be helpful is, if there is more focus on quality, especially in medical devices, whereby we just don't ensure the quality of the device at the beginning but also throughout the lifecycle of the equipment.

And if regulation can be brought in to ensure that that is the focus of all the healthcare infrastructure, then that will naturally build an ethical quality conscious healthcare industry. Which will not just benefit the manufacturers here but there will be more acceptance for their equipment in other countries as well. So, we have to be willing to make those kinds of investments and regulations which will ensure that a regulated medical device industry develops in India. 

Another aspect is that as a medical device manufacturer we need supply of components and the components industry has to come in India as well, today chips are still manufactured in Taiwan and we have to import from there.  So, unless those chipsets and other components get manufactured here, more deepening of local manufacturing will not happen. 

How do you think ER&D can be leveraged in India to aid the Medtech Industry?

The requirements for chip design and chip manufacturing are two different elements. In chip design we have had a decent amount of investment which has taken place in India because there are a lot of chip companies who have a very strong R&D presence in Bangalore. And as a result, we already have the chip design capability to a certain extent in India. What we need is chip manufacturing or fabrication capabilities and that requires a significant amount of investments and scale which needs to take place. 

This will require huge incentives and other benefits so that the companies can find it attractive to manufacture in India. Presently manufacturing components is a big challenge for India. What is required is to be able to build and scale chip manufacturing capabilities and I think that is something which requires more attention rather than just innovation.

What are your plans for the company in the coming years?

Going forward, we are going to further deepen our manufacturing in India. Secondly, we continue to sell and service high-quality equipment in the Indian market and we want to focus our attention on cardiology and oncology given that India has a huge burden of non-communicable diseases. 

Secondly, we have a big innovation lab centre in Bangalore which is involved in end-to-end product development that is used in India and other countries.  We want to deepen that so that we can design and manufacture more products for the Indian market and other markets around the globe. Under the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme we have started manufacturing Ultrasounds and CTs here which are getting launched outside of India and more such projects will continue in the future as well.