Friday, January 13, 2012

A tale of three cities

It's been a quick, and sometimes not so quick, 2 weeks in India.  We're finishing up our visits in our third city, Bangalore, which has turned out to be a great summary of the whole experience. Delhi showed the stark differenes between public and private health care throughtout the country, while Mumbai showed how industry leaders were attempting to make a difference in "the bottom of the pyramid." Bangalore has been the showcase for innovation in Indian health care, highlighting where their future might be heading.  From Vaatsalaya's infrastructure in smaller urban areas to Narayana reaching out to the rural villages to try and eliminate preventable blindness in premature infants.  Not to mention Narayana's medical campuses that minimize costs through high capacity utilization and innovative leasing contracts with their technology vendors.  We also had dinner with the co-founders of Mitra last night. Their research will hopefully lead to a new generation of highly sensitive diagnostic tests for cancer, matching the right drug to the right cancer.  This could potentially decrease the amount of trial and error involved in finding the best cancer therapy for each unique patient.  As we found out, there used to be great opportunity to simply make an existing product in a cheaper way, but with the new patent laws in place, more of India will be forced to innovate.  I wonder how long it will be before India will catch up in that regard?? 

And by the way, GE is doing some pretty amazing work too.

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