Challenges faced by the Indian healthcare system & solution

ALSAT Diagnostics Pvt Ltd has been incorporated with the objective of democratizing diagnostics and trying to address the basic challenges faced by the Indian Healthcare system.

Three of the biggest challenges that the Indian healthcare system faces are: 

1. Access to Quality Healthcare

With a population of around 1.4 billion, the Indian healthcare system has a huge challenge of accessibility of quality healthcare, and this problem is amplified multiple times in the rural areas where more than 60% of our population still resides.  

2. Shortage of trained & efficient manpower

This is another aspect of the healthcare challenge in India. Despite having a huge population, we still face a shortage of skilled and efficient manpower to support our clinicians. This situation becomes even more alarming in the rural areas where 70% of our population resides.

3. Lack of Infrastructure

The third equally important aspect is the lack of proper infrastructure to provide healthcare services to the citizens in India. Though the country has made good progress in the last couple of decades, we still need to travel a long distance.

We at ALSAT Diagnostics strongly believe that we may not be able to eliminate these challenges immediately, but we can surely make use of the latest technologies to improve healthcare management. When we say, the latest technological advances and newer solutions, we are not talking about those advanced instruments which are very costly to buy and equally costlier to maintain. What we are talking about is the solutions/technologies which are not complicated and which can bypass the need to have a very sophisticated infrastructure. 

The situation demands unique solutions that are affordable, accessible, and efficient instead of pursuing technological advancements which are not going to address the actual challenges of our country. A large part of the above-mentioned challenges can be addressed immediately, If we can equip healthcare professionals with the Point of care testing (POCT) instruments that enable more rapid clinical decision making in the process of diagnosis, treatment choice and monitoring, and prognosis, as well as operational decision making and resource utilization.

This is important to share how these Point of Care Testing Devices are going to address the challenges that we highlighted in the beginning. Let us look at these ones by one.

1. Patient load management helps in easy access:

With the help of POCT devices, diagnosis and decision making is completed in a single visit, and no need for the patients to visit the doctor the next day again with reports. This not just reduces the unnecessary visits to the healthcare professional but also saves a lot of time and money for the patients also. 

Let us try and understand this with the help of a diabetic patient scenario:  We all know how glucometers (again a POCT device) have helped clinicians manage diabetes mellitus more efficiently.  When sugar screening can be done at the point of care then why not try and get the associated parameters like HBA1C also at the time and place of patient care. Why should a diabetic patient come back to the doctor the next day again with the HBA1C report when all of this can be done on the day of their first visit only.  Will, it did not save time for the healthcare professional? 

2. Highly trained manpower and support staff:

Some of the POCT instruments are so user-friendly that one does not require very high technical skills to run them. The existing support staff can be provided basic training to operate these POCT devices.  Some of these just plug and play and provide instant results in 3 to 15 minutes. This not just eliminates the need for a highly skilled and trained manpower   

3. No need for sophisticated infrastructure:

The actual POCT instrument and its reagents can be kept at room temperature and there is no need to set up a separate facility with all those air-conditioning and power backup requirements. Imagine, high-end tests like Thyroid profile, fertility parameters like LH/FSH/B-HCG/TESTO/PROG, and cardiac parameters like NT-pro BNP, Ck-MB, Troponin being possible on these POCT instruments. 

In that case, HCP does not need high-end costly instruments, separate infrastructure to keep those devices, and manage those bulky instruments. On top of it, the HCP gets instant diagnosis done and makes treatment decisions in 3-12 minutes. On top of it, the patient is not coming back to him the next day, just to show the reports.

All of the examples shared are not just wild imaginations on our part, there are solutions like this and our commitment is to make those advancements accessible for healthcare management in India. At the same time, we promise to work with our teams and partners to identify the gap areas and then work tirelessly to develop the solutions to fill those gaps and play our part in improving the healthcare system of our country. 

As shared in the beginning, the goal of ALSAT Diagnostics is to ensure that we try to bring those innovative and user-friendly technologies to address the basic challenges of the Indian healthcare system and democratize the diagnostics for advancing Life.