Medical Technology: Healing India’s Chronic Ailments in Health Systems

Indian health delivery systems have been facing structural challenges for several decades. These challenges include chronic ailments—persistent shortages of healthcare professionals, uneven access to care, and weak coordination between primary, secondary, and tertiary healthcare services. India has made tremendous progress in expanding its pharmaceutical sector, strengthening medical education, and building large diagnostic networks, the system continues to remain uneven and vulnerable.

Vulnerabilities come from the fact that it is more accessible for those who can pay, more approachable if consumed more as in case of luxury health, and more expensive as portion of earning per capita, for those who are at the bottom of earning pyramid.

Despite sustained policy attention and reform efforts over decades, these systemic gaps still adversely affect delivery systems. It is promising to note that a new wave of transformation is now emerging through medical technology (MedTech), offering the country an unprecedented opportunity to correct some of the deepest structural gaps. For a long time, India viewed medical technology merely as a collection of products rather than as a strategic solution for strengthening the health system. This perception was shaped largely by India’s overwhelming dependence on imports, which accounted for more than 90% of the country’s medical technology needs until about five years ago.

The landscape is now changing rapidly. The creation of the Andhra Pradesh Medical Technology Zone (AMTZ), today the world’s largest integrated medical technology ecosystem, along with policy initiatives such as the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) and Research Linked Incentive (RLI) schemes, has begun to stimulate domestic manufacturing and innovation. Innovations and new technologies such as digital health, artificial intelligence, and connected care platforms are expanding the scope and much can be achieved through these interventions.

Health ATMs can be one of the most promising innovations. We are aware that sanitary napkins once revolutionised access to women’s health essentials, Health ATMs can also democratise health assessment and diagnostics by bringing basic testing and tele-consultation services closer to citizens.

With enhanced production, these health ATMs can be installed in diverse locations such as banks, colleges, factories, gyms, metro stations, and shopping malls, allowing people to access essential health services at minimal cost. In this segment, currently there is no significant regulatory barriers, large-scale adoption by public institutions and private enterprises could expand access to preventive healthcare across both urban and semi-urban India.

Regulatory reform is yet another area that needs urgent attention. Currently, except pregnancy test kits, almost no diagnostic tests are permitted to be sold over the counter in pharmacies. We can buy devices such as thermometers, glucometers, or wheelchairs without prescriptions, but cannot legally buy diagnostic kits for diseases such as tuberculosis, malaria, or dengue directly from the market. Such restrictions obviously pose an unnecessary barrier. It is well-known that diagnostics are often the gateway to timely treatment. Allowing certain diagnostic kits to be included in the Schedule K or over-the-counter category would enable pharmacies to stock and sell them without prescriptions, thereby expanding access to early detection and preventive care.

Another transformation is visible with the scope and importance of tele-surgery. Now, with robotic surgical systems now capable of remote operations using high-speed 5G networks with lag times of less than 120 milliseconds, it is possible to bridge the gap created by the shortage of specialist surgeons in remote locations. Rather than replacing local surgeons, these systems would complement their capabilities by allowing specialist surgeons located in advanced hospitals to guide or perform complex procedures remotely with compromising safety.

Medical technology also offers solutions for segments of society that often remain overlooked in healthcare planning, particularly the elderly and persons with disabilities. Many people from these social groups come across daily challenges simply because they lack access to basic assistive healthcare products such as wheelchairs, hearing aids, cervical collars, or paraplegic support systems. A co-payment-based social support system that periodically provides such assistive products to the elderly and persons with disabilities could significantly improve their health outcomes while reducing the strain on hospitals and caregivers.

India has been facing increasing burden of non-communicable diseases. Hence, home care and mobile health services offer another critical opportunity. With these interventions services such as dialysis, dental care, and palliative pain management are likely to witness sustained growth in demand. Expanding hospital infrastructure alone cannot meet this demand effectively. A carefully designed deregulation framework that allows services such as dialysis, dental care through mobile units, or home-based palliative care could enable private providers to deliver services directly to patients in urban and semi-urban areas. This approach would ease the burden on hospitals while offering patients greater convenience and flexibility in receiving treatment without imposing additional financial or infrastructure burdens on the government.

Finally, ethical and transparent pricing norms are essential for ensuring that medical technology remains accessible. The experience of cardiac stent price regulation in 2015 demonstrated how rational pricing can make life-saving procedures more affordable while simultaneously encouraging domestic manufacturing. Similar regulatory interventions for knee implants produced comparable outcomes.

As India’s ever expanding middle class seeks a robust and integrated healthcare delivery systems, we have a unique opportunity to introduce structured price rationalisation for medical devices. These initiatives must be undertaken in consultation with healthcare providers and domestic manufacturers to ensure both affordability and sustainability.

These strategies have potential to not only transform healthcare delivery but also strengthening India med tech sector. By encouraging demand generation and domestic manufacturing, India’s current $15 billion medical technology industry could grow to nearly $50 billion in the coming years. At the same time, the country’s dependence on imported medical devices could decline dramatically—from more than 90% a few years ago to as low as 20%—positioning India not only as a self-reliant healthcare system but also as a global exporter of medical technology.

(The Author is Managing Director and Founder CEO of AMTZ, Vizag and Trustee of India Brand Equity Foundation. Views are personal.)