India’s vanishing clinicians - is technology a panacea?
12-Jan-15, Financial Express
India is in a tough bind. Demand for healthcare workers is set to explode due to both domestic and international trends but the country’s ability to produce more healthcare professionals has seriously lagged demand. In fact the MCI has actually decreased the number of allowed seats for MBBS-level doctors in an effort to ‘preserve the quality of medical education.’ FICCI estimates that over the next ten years, India will need to double its number of doctors, triple its number of nurses, and quadruple its number of paramedical staff. To make matters worse, these estimates are likely to be conservative.
The number of Indian seniors is set to grow from 100 million currently to 240 million by 2050. This demographic boom is being met by a quickly developing senior care industry, heightening the need for nurses and paramedical staff. Also, historically healthcare spend in India has grown slower than the economy as a whole. This is sharp contrast with its emerging market peers where spend growth has outpaced economic growth by around two percentage points. Given the shortfall in healthcare infrastructure in India, this seems unlikely to continue. Both these trends will exacerbate clinician supply shortfalls.
The talent gap in India can be narrowed via three approaches: task shifting, creating more attractive career paths and a more extensive use of technology in healthcare delivery.