Future Medicine and its Technological Impact

Med Piper Technologies Pvt Ltd and Journo Med conducted a Webinar ” Exploring application and technology of Future Medicine, delivery industry, labs and diagnostics” in association with Hospex, IRIA Kerala, Instaclinik, Telemedicine Society of India- Kerala Chapter. This event was conducted on 29th November 2022.

 Dr Anil Prahladan, Consultant Radiologist and Cofounder, ARAMIS Imaging LLP, Trivandrum, Executive Committee member-IRIA Kerala, summarized the outbreak of covid pandemic and the development of a vaccine, and the delivery of vaccines across various hospitals globally, vaccine prominence and distribution of vaccines in the healthcare sector, delivery network of several hospitals which served as a miracle in curing the disease along with the guidance of the latest technology available for the current population. There is a vast technological advancement observed in healthcare sector, delivery network, labs and diagnostics and which dragged the healthcare sector to enter the new phase of “Modern Medicine”. 

Mr Agnishwar Jayaprakash, the Founder and CEO of Garuda Aerospace, from Chennai is a second-generation Entrepreneur who founded Ignite India, a revolutionary program or an ecosystem for innovation. He discussed about the latest advancements in the field of Future Medicine and its Technological Impact on Healthcare industry, delivery networks, labs and diagnostic centres. 

Impact of the drone industry on developing the healthcare facilities 

Mr Agneshwar Jaiprakash, the founder and CEO of Garuda Aerospace, spoke about the drone technology that recently evolved in the medical and the healthcare industry and as a result several opportunities arised that impacted several case studies with emerging technologies and how it had laid a disruptive potential against the various multibillion-dollar sectors like precision agriculture, healthcare, industrial, and defence in developing countries like India, Southeast Asia, Africa and South America. He also explained the importance of drone usage in the medical and defence sectors. Drone usage is more recommended for progressive things in recent times. Not only for miscellaneous usage, but drones also carry payloads in the agricultural sector. Recently the demand of drone usage has been highlighted where the swiggy adopted partnership with the drone-based deliveries marked their significance, even the medicines are being delivered using the drone technology in major cities like Chennai, New Delhi, Bangalore and Hyderabad. 

The biggest concern for us in health care sector is the lack of proper amenities at rural places especially at the primary healthcare centres.  As the rural is still underdeveloped, lack of proper transportation was a major concern, and it is where drone technology came into existence.  The largest agreed drone “Cassandra” is a beautiful model, sustainable for the medical deliveries. The healthcare is primed towards major cities and the focus area has been on disrupting the space in rural and semi-urban India where drone-based services cut down a significant amount of time carrying emergency medication to long distances where the people lack primary healthcare centres or availability of doctors even serves as a main focus. 

The next focus area would be e-commerce in 2010 which gained its significance during the pandemic. Ever since the pandemic, people rely on drones and other allied technologies. So, to conclude aerospace has been focused on additional layers of artificial intelligence, block-chain, cloud computing and data analytics onto the data it captures and the payloads that one carries has been expanding right from normal medicines, vaccines to dials to organs to also like to know for defence supplies, snakebite vaccines, many types of diseases which serves a game changer where major healthcare is concerned. There are several hospitals, diagnostic centres, labs available for us to explore and ensure that the quality standard perspective one wants to adhere to every norm that is out there because it’s easy to alienate and ignore the facts of how well any form of vaccine or medicine should be preserved while transporting them. So, at the same time, there is a need for such an awareness for the people in the drone industry and manufacturers and service providers who work for the technological enhancement and learn a lot more. 

Mr Rajarajan S, Chief Operating Officer of MGM Healthcare Chennai, Tamil Nadu spoke about the healthcare sector and his work earlier in diagnostics and health-tech, multi-speciality hospitals and regarding his strong oncology background. He is a member of the American College of Healthcare Executives and as well as a member of the Telemedicine Society of India where the core areas of research would be focused. Recently Mr Rajarajan and Mr Agneshwar Jaiprakash took certain permissions to carry out the drone-based organ transfers. So, it is still under the testing phase, and we observe that organ transfer currently serves as a distant plan and it would be helpful for airport-to-hospital transfer. An Airforce carrier transferring an organ in 40 mins was designed for the first time in history and is an applaudable thing in the technological space, There are sustainable health advancements that need to be road mapped. The advancements and the innovations are good but the disruption in the technology of healthcare remains phenomenal. Even the mixing of chemotherapeutic agents in cancer drugs makes them highly toxic and for people exposed to those areas, their health gets detiorated. So, precautions must be taken when exposed to such conditions.  The robotics evolution in surgery and chemotherapeutic diagnosis is another research area which is gaining attention in recent times. Currently, in the diagnostic industry and robotic industry, rapid progress is observed in automation where radiologists play a crucial role but even in hospitals now it is totally technology-driven, where the data transfer itself serves as a key and radiologists’ or doctors presence is not required as well. Most importantly, structural data is going to be the future. There is increase in the cost of healthcare services and delivery would be a major concern. Already, the input costs of healthcare have phenomenally increased over a time, especially during post-pandemic, there is a 40 -50% increase in the input cost of various items and materials that one use. So, the technology is highly effective and serves the purpose required for the healthcare perspective. Here, Telemedicine gives a closer impact.   Telemedicine has gained prominence during the post-pandemic and there are several companies which evolved after that. Many start-ups advanced especially from the region of Tamil Nadu, Chennai and other parts of Tamil Nadu, which were not active yet. So, technology has come in but over time there would be polarization, the people who can provide sustain or going to stay and others are going to vanish. So, Hospitals need to be extra cautious as they are service providers, technology adaptors, stakeholders, and global health seekers who tie-up with the US and serve global clients. 

 Telemedicine, the Future of Health Delivery

Mr Bijoy MG, is one of the stalwarts of the Telemedicine Industry in Kerala. he is the Founder and CEO of Unarv Telemedicine and Healthcare Services. Unarv literally means to “wake up” or “rise” in Malayalam. He is the Secretary of the Television Society of India. Telemedicine was just started in 2002 by ISRO which provided the satellite link and crisis support Telemedicine. Thus, Telemedicine came into existence. 

What is Telemedicine?

A communication platform connecting a patient with healthcare providers irrespective of geographical location.

Recently, the 5G has been introduced in India and few of us of aware of that technology which revolutionizes Telemedicine. 

Telemedicine Ingredients

•         Email voice- for Offline Consultations
•         Video- Over Phone Consultation
•         Imaging –Radiology orders and reports
•         Devices Integration-Medical Devices data captures and reports
•         Lab Integration- Lab orders and reports 
•         EMR with E-prescription- Electronic Medical Report and e-Prescription

Scope of Integration of Medicine Delivery in Telemedicine

•         Major benefits elderly patients get medicine at home integrating online pharmacy services
•         Delivery logistics need to be analyzed
•         Telemedicine catering to the rural population benefits online delivery of medicines
•         Major challenges in delivering difficult terrains can be overridden with recent advancements in drone technologies.

TPG Guidelines

TPG Guidelines are released in 2020. Telemedicine prescriptions are restricted to the usage of drugs as per the first version of TPG. More drugs are getting added to the TPG annexure for prescribing.

Mr Piyush Jain, Chief Digital Officer at SRL Diagnostics shared his thoughts on how digital applications improve or influence delivery in the diagnostics sector. Digital Transformation is one that most organizations opt for and is accelerated during the pandemic. Digitalization is one area on which even the government focuses.   The Ayushman Bharat Program and the A.B. D. M. policy are around it. This happened during the pandemic. There was tremendous advancement during the pandemic and post-pandemic. Even medical tests have been gathered at home and even customers started using swiggy for food delivery, a blanket for grocery delivery, uber for cars etc. India though not a popular market for diagnostic tests has followed it during pandemic. The diagnostics test became popular but because of covid 19 testing, the word testing became prominent. After the pandemic, most of them started relying on health coverage and one section of society started investing in preventive health packages to the tune of Rs. 3000-4000 annually.

A major drift was observed in the healthcare sector involving digitalization and progress.  Obtaining awareness and driving towards digital channels for acquiring customers. People surf google and social media for obtaining information and gaining awareness. Customer experience towards the usage of digital technology has been increased. Digitalization opens up entire internal insufficiency in an organization·  The last idea is disruptive, which creates an entire business and enhances the business to expand. Digitalization runs throughout the spectrum, and it opens up diagnostic companies which are in much competition. Digitalization at last provides sticky growth towards companies as well as diagnostic centres.