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Pharma: ‘Digitalization’ Not A Panacea – A Basic Step For Giant Leaps

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The hype of ‘Digitalization’ in the pharma industry, virtually as a panacea, is palpable all around. It gives many a feel, directly or indirectly, that this one-time, resource-intensive, disruptive transformation would reap a rich harvest for a long time. In some way, good or bad, the sense of urgency underlying the hype, could possibly be akin to Y2K, that one witnessed before the turn of the new millennium.

Notwithstanding the current ballyhoo, the process of digitization in several Indian pharma companies began since quite some time and is now gathering wind in its wings. Several studies vindicating this point, were reported by the Indian media, as well. One such report of October 31, 2016 highlighted – even around 2013, a number of Indian drug players commenced adopting digitization. They mostly began with the use of modern technology for scientific detailing to doctors, often using algorithms for better insights into issues, like patient compliance. A similar trend was seen also in China, the report added.

Be that as it may, this article will explore whether or not ‘Digitalization’ is a panacea for all pharma business hurdles. Or, it is the backbone to build and maintain a patient-centric organization, with need-based subsequent giant technological leaps, for game changing sustainable outcomes. For better clarity of all, I shall dwell on this concept with AI as the next disruptive step, as it would play an increasingly critical role to be in sync with the customers of the fast-growing digital world.

Digitization is the bedrock to move forward with newer technologies:

That digitization is the backbone of AI adoption was brought out in the May 2019 paper by McKinsey Global Institute - titled, ‘Twenty-five years of digitization: Ten insights into how to play it right.’ It articulated, leveraging, and transitioning from, digital to new frontier technologies is an imperative, as several new frontier technologies are opening up, such as AI.  It also spotlighted that early digitization is the foundation of AI deployment.

Elaborating the point further, the article wrote: ‘70 percent of companies that generate 50 percent of their sales through digitization are already investing in one AI domain. The evidence suggests that incumbents that have adopted AI early and are savvy about deploying these technologies have experienced strong profit growth. In effect AI is a new, higher- performance type of digital technology that may boost the ability of firms to accelerate their digital performance.’

No doubt, several hundred AI use cases would provide evidence of widespread benefits to operations and profitability for AI adoption. However, from the drug industry perspective, the possible dilemmas that will be important to understand, what factors are prompting faster adoption of AI in pharma. Besides, how to make out – what type of use of AI is likely to be most effective for an organization.

Regardless of the dilemma, the AI buzz is gaining momentum:

The fervor around AI is now peaking up, more than ever before. Regardless of the general dilemma – ‘what type of use of AI is likely to be most effective for an organization.,’ several companies are working on AI application in various areas. In sales and marketing domain, these include, improving customer interactions, maximizing product launches, understanding patient insights. This was also corroborated in an article, published by ZS on July 24, 2019.

Why is the AI buzz increasing in pharma?

The above paper identifies 3 broad elements for rapid increase of AI buzz in the pharma industry, which I am paraphrasing as follows:

  • Data requirement for any meaningful business decision-making process has exploded, facilitated by increasing use of internet- based digital platforms.
  • With the increasing digitization of virtually anything in everyday life, paper-based processes are fast disappearing.
  • Realization of game changing impact of new AI algorithms with high degree of precision, on business.

As AI-based interventions are making a radical impact on everyday life, most pharma and biotech players are progressively getting convinced that it will eventually transform many critical areas of the business, despite a slow start.

AI can deliver much more than ever before, across pharma domains: 

AI has a great potential to meet critical requirements of almost all domains of the drug industry. For example: AI may be used to help a medical representative get top insights for his particular day’s or a week’s or a month’s call with doctors by sifting through all his daily reports for that period. Some companies are already moving into this direction. For example, Novartis, reportedly, has equipped sales representatives ‘with an AI service that suggests doctors to visit and subjects to talk up during their meetings.’

Similar AI-based cognitive insights may be obtained from the patient-collected data in the apps or other digital tools. Deep understanding of the process of thinking of important doctors and patients, would facilitate developing customized content for engagement with them, and thereby help achieve well-defined goals with precision.

There are instances of significant success with the use of AI in R&D, clinical trials, many areas of sales and marketing, including supply chains. Nevertheless, the general concern of sharing confidential patient information, often limits access to requisite data for use in AI solutions. Appropriate regulations are expected to address this apprehension, soon.

Big Pharma players are already in it:

The paper – ‘Artificial Intelligence in Life Sciences: The Formula for Pharma Success Across the Drug Lifecycle,’ published on December 05, 2018 by L.E.K Consulting, discussed this point in detail. It says, ‘each of the major pharma players is investing in the technology at some level.’

For example, pharma and biotech majors, such as Novartis, Roche, Pfizer, Merck, AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline, Sanofi, AbbVie, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Johnson & Johnson, are either collaborating or acquired AI technologies to acquire a cutting-edge in business.

The paper also reiterates, developments in AI applications are occurring across the spectrum of pharma business, from target discovery to post-approval activities to automate processes, generate insights from large-scale data and support stakeholder engagement. Let me illustrate this point with an example below.

Example of use of AI for better patient compliance, improving sales and profit:

As highlighted in my article, published in this blog on May 20, 2019, effective use of AI for better patient compliance, can help improve concerned company’s both top and bottom lines. I mentioned there: ‘According to November 16, 2016 report, published by Capgemini and HealthPrize Technologies, globally, annual pharmaceutical revenue losses had increased from USD 564 billion in 2012 to USD 637 billion due to non-adherence to medications for chronic conditions. This works out to 59 percent of the USD 1.1 trillion in total global pharmaceutical revenue in 2015.’

Several reports vindicate that drug companies are making phenomenal progress in this area. Let me cite an example of achieving huge success to improve treatment adherence of patients during clinical trials. The September 26, 2016  Press Release of AiCure, an AI company that visually confirms medication ingestion on smartphones, announced that use of AiCure AI platform demonstrated 90 percent medication adherence in patients with schizophrenia, participating in Phase 2 of the AbbVie study.

Opportunity to make more effective drugs faster and at reduced cost:

Besides, drug discovery, clinical trials, patient monitoring, compliance monitoring – AI applications have been developed for marketing optimization, as well. As AI technology spreads its wings with a snowballing effect, taking a quantum leap in organizational effectiveness, productivity and outcomes will be a reality for many. Moreover, AI now offers a never before opportunity of making novel, more effective and safer drugs, faster and at much reduced cost.

Thus, I reckon, AI-based technology would be a basic requirement of the drug industry for effective operation with desirable business outcomes, in less than a decade. Its slow start as compared to many other industries, notwithstanding. Further, the pharma industry’s endeavor for a swift digital transformation – the backbone of AI adoption, as captured in recent surveys, also vindicates this belief. Other business realities are also generating a strong tailwind for this process.

Pharma’s swift digital transformation to create a solid base for AI:

The ‘White Paper’, titled ‘Use of Artificial Intelligence and Advanced Analytics in pharmaceuticals’ by FICCI captured this scenario quite well. It pointed out, two seismic shifts in the pharma business, namely, – reducing prices and demonstrating greater value from their therapies, along with a swing from treatment to prevention, diagnostics and cure – are prompting the industry for a holistic transformation of business.

Which is why, pharma players are exhibiting greater intent for ‘Digitalization’ of business, paving the way for quick adoption of different modern technologies, such as AI and advanced analytics. This fundamental shift will not only improve efficiencies and reduce costs, but also significantly help adapting to more patient centric business models. Yet, post digital transformation the key question that still remains to be addressed – how does an organization identify and focus on the right areas or ‘good problems’ for AI intervention, fetching game changing outcomes, on an ongoing basis.

Conclusion:

There could be many approaches to address this situation. However, according to ZS, building the capability and the muscle first for AI, and then looking for the problems, may not be a great idea. This could make a company, even post ‘Digitalization’, flounder with the right applications of AI technology. Thus, while venturing into AI intervention for watershed outcomes, the top priority of an organization will be to resolve this dilemma for precise identification of the right problems.

These areas may even include crucial bottlenecks in the business process, AI interventions for which, would lead to not just incremental benefits, but cutting-edge value creation, for a giant leap in an all-round performance. The name of the game is to start selectively with the right problems, evaluate the upshots of AI use, before scaling up and adding new areas. Ongoing value creation of such nature can’t be achieved just by one-time digital transformation, sans imbibing other disruptive technologies, proactively.

This, in my view, has to happen and is practically unavoidable, primarily driven by two key factors, as below:

The first one was the focal point of the ‘2018 Digital Savvy HCP Survey Report of Indegene.’ It found, the highest jump of digital adoption by healthcare practitioners (HCPs) was seen in 2018, compared to its similar surveys done from 2015 to 2017, signaling physicians’ fast-growing digital preference, as we move on.

The second one comes from an important ‘consumer behavioral perspective.’ and is specially in India. According to a report by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) – with 451 million monthly active internet users at the end of financial year 2019, India is now second only to China in terms of internet users. More, importantly, the digital savvy customers are also using other disruptive technologies, mostly smartphone based.

Thus, disruptive digital transformation in pharma domains, including sales and marketing, is a necessary basic step. It will help companies being all-time ready to imbibe other leading-edge technologies, such as AI, for giant leaps to higher growth trajectories.

By: Tapan J. Ray

Disclaimer: The views/opinions expressed in this article are entirely my own, written in my individual and personal capacity. I do not represent any other person or organization for this opinion.

 

 

The Game is Changing: Ensure Better Treatment Outcomes: Leverage Technology

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Today, several pharma players, mostly ‘encouraged’ by many non-pharma tech companies, are trying to gain, at least, a toehold in the digital health care space. It is visible even within the generic drug industry. Such initiatives, as they gain a critical mass, will remold the process of doing – almost everything in the pharma business, catapulting the concerned drug companies to a much higher growth trajectory, as many believe.

This is quite evident from an interview of Fierce Pharma with the senior management of Sandoz – the generic drug arm of Novartis, that was published on May 14, 2019. The honchos said: “We’re looking across the whole value chain to make sure we’re embracing digital and technology wherever we can. So that means from the way that we innovate, to the way that we sell and the way that we operate and do day-to-day business.” The process covers “a whole range of activities from how you use AI and automation, all the way through to prescription digital therapies.”

I discussed about leveraging technology in the pharma space to address many burning issues – both for patients and the pharma industry. One such article, “Focus on Patient Compliance To Boost Sales…And More…”, was published in this blog on May 20, 2019. It establishes that even world-class sales and marketing programs can, at best, ensure higher prescription generations, but can’t prevent over 50 percent revenue loss from those prescriptions, due to patient non-compliance.

Interestingly, the issue of ‘nonadherence to treatment’ is being debated, since several decades. Various conventional measures were suggested and also taken. But the problem still persists in a huge scale, with probably an increasing trend. Thus, fresh measures, preferably by leveraging modern technology, are of high relevance in this area.

In this article, I shall illustrate the above point, with one of the most exciting areas in the digital space – the digital therapeutics. This is a reality today and marching ahead at a much faster pace than many would have anticipated.

Unfolding another disruptive innovation in healthcare:

One of the articles that I wrote on this subject is ‘Unfolding A Disruptive Innovation in Healthcare,’ which highlights a different facet of the same subject. Thus, let me begin today’s discussion with a recapitulation of some important aspects of a drug, particularly the following ones:

  • A large number of patients don’t find many drugs accessible and affordable during the entire course of treatment.
  • Drugs have to be administered orally, systemically or through any other route
  • Alongside effective disease prevention or treatment, many drugs may bother patients with long and short-term side-effects, including serious ones.
  • Treatment outcomes can’t often be easily measured by patients.

These are, of course, known to many, but several questions come up in this area, which also deserve serious answers, such as:

  • Are drugs indispensable for the treatment of all types of disease?
  • Can a holistic disease treatment be made more accessible and affordable with radically different measures?
  • Can the same effectiveness of a drug, if not more, be achieved with no side-effects with a non-drug therapy?
  • Can outcomes be significantly improved following this process, as compared to drugs?

In search of answers to these questions – arrive digital therapeutics:

In search of answers to the above questions, a number of tech savvy whiz kids. dared to chart an uncharted frontier by asking themselves: Is it possible to treat a disease with a software – having no side-effects, but providing better cost effectiveness and treatment outcomes to patients?

Today, with the signs of healthy growth of the seed – sown with the above thoughts, ushers in – yet another game changing pathway for disease treatment. The quest for success of these pathfinders can benefit both – the drug innovators and also the generic players, in equal measure, besides patients. Digital therapeutics is an upshot of this pursuit.

Its ‘purpose’ outlines – why it’s one of the most exciting areas in digital space: 

The Digital Therapeutics Alliance well captures the purpose of digital therapeutics, as, “Improving healthcare quality, outcomes, and value through optimizing the use and integration of digital therapeutics.”

What do digital therapeutics actually do?

There are several, but quite similar descriptions of digital therapeutics. For example, Deloitte described digital therapeutics as software products used in the treatment of medical conditions, enabling patients to take greater control over their care and are focused on delivering clinical outcomes. It also highlights, ‘digital therapeutics are poised to shift medicine’s emphasis from physically dosed treatment regimens to end-to-end disease management based on behavioral change.’

Digital therapeutics offers all positives of a drug and more:

In indications where digital therapy is approved and available, the new approach offers all positive attributes of an equivalent drug, with no side-effect. There isn’t any need of its physical administration to patients, either. Deloitte elucidated this point very aptly: “As software and health care converge to create digital therapeutics, this new breed of life sciences technology is helping to transform patient care and deliver better clinical outcomes.” More importantly, all this can be made available for better compliance and at a cheaper cost in many cases.

For example, according to the article published in the MIT Technology Review on April 07, 2017, carrying the title ‘Can Digital Therapeutics Be as Good as Drugs?’: “Some digital therapeutics are already much cheaper than average drug. At Big Health, people are charged $ 400 a year, or about $ 33 a month to use the insomnia software. The sleeping pill Ambien, by contrast, costs $ 73 for six tablets of shut-eye.”

Two basic types of digital therapeutics:

The Digital Therapeutics Alliance also underscores: “Digital therapeutics rely on high quality software to deliver evidence-based interventions to patients to prevent, manage, or treat disease.” It further elaborates: “They are used independently or in concert with medications, devices, or other therapies to optimize patient care and health outcomes.” In line with this description, the above MIT Technology Review article, as well, classifies digital therapy into two basic categories:

  • For medication replacement
  • For medication augmentation

It also says that the digital therapy for sleep (sleep.io), belongs to the first category, making sleeping pill most often unnecessary and with outcomes better than those of tablets. Whereas, the second category includes various disease specific software apps that improve patient compliance with better self-monitoring, just as co-prescription of drugs.

Nonetheless, the same MIT article gave a nice example of ‘medication augmentation’ with digital therapy. The paper mentioned, Propeller Health – a digital company, has inked a deal with GlaxoSmithKline for a ‘digitally guided therapy’ platform. The technology combines GSK’s asthma medications with Propeller Health made sensors that patients attach with their inhalers to monitor when these are used. Patients who get feedback from the app, end up using medication less often, the study reported.

The first USFDA approved digital therapy:

Let me give one example each of the launch of ‘medication replacement’ and ‘medication augmentation’ digital therapy, although there were other similar announcements.

  • On November 20, 2018, by a media release, Sandoz (Novartis) and Pear Therapeutics announced the commercial availability of reSET – a substance use disorder treatment that was the first software-only digital therapeutic cleared by the US-FDA, for medical prescriptions.
  • Closely followed by the above, on December 21, 2019, Teva Pharmaceutical announced US-FDA approval for its ProAir Digihaler for treatment and prevention of bronchospasm. Scheduled for launch in 2019, it is the first and only digital inhaler with built-in sensors that connects and transmit inhaler usage data to a companion mobile application, providing insights on inhaler use to asthma and COPD patients – for prevention and better treatment of the disease.

Many other projects on digital therapeutics are fast progressing.

Conclusion:

Stressing a key importance of digital therapeutics in chronic disease conditions, McKinsey article of February 2018, titled ‘Digital therapeutics: Preparing for takeoff’, also underlines: ‘Digital therapeutics tend to target conditions that are poorly addressed by the healthcare system today, such as chronic diseases or neurological disorders.’

It also, further, emphasized that digital therapeutics can often deliver treatment more cheaply than traditional therapy, by demonstrating their value in clinical terms. It illustrated the point with US-FDA’s approval for a mobile application that helps treat alcohol, marijuana, and cocaine addiction, well-supported by clinical trial data. The results showed 40 percent of patients using the app abstained for a three-month period, compared with 17.6 percent of those who used standard therapy alone.

I now come back to where I started from. The pharma ball game is changing, and that too at a faster pace.Ensuring and demonstrating better treatment outcomes for patients – both for patented drugs and the generic ones, will increasingly be the cutting-edge to gain market share and grow the business. Thus, leveraging technology to its fullest is no longer just an option for pharma companies. The evolution of digital therapeutics as a game changer, vindicates the point.

By: Tapan J. Ray   

Disclaimer: The views/opinions expressed in this article are entirely my own, written in my individual and personal capacity. I do not represent any other person or organization for this opinion.

Health being a basic human right, the proposal for ‘Universal Health Coverage’ augurs well for India

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“The right to health is relevant to all States: every State has ratified at least one international human rights treaty recognizing the right to health. Moreover, States have committed themselves to protecting this right through international declarations, domestic legislation and policies, and at international conferences.”

-  The Factsheet, Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and the WHO

Universal Health Coverage or Universal Healthcare:

In this context, “Universal Health Coverage (UHC)” is a healthcare system where all citizens of a country are covered for the basic healthcare services. In many countries UHC is also known as “Universal Healthcare” and may have different system types as follows:

Single Payer: The government provides insurance to all citizens.

Two-Tier: The government provides basic insurance coverage to citizens and allows purchase of additional voluntary insurance whenever a citizen wants to.

Insurance Mandate: The government mandates that insurance must be bought by all its citizens, like what happened in the USA in 2010.

Global scenario for UHC:

As per published reports, all 33 developed nations have UHC in place. The United States was the only exception until recently, till President Barack Obama administration implemented the ‘path breaking’ new healthcare reform policy in the country in 2010 against tough political opposition.

The new healthcare reform measures in the US had raised a storm within the local pharmaceutical industry, as well,  at that time for various reasons.

The countries providing UHC:

Based on an article titled, ‘ Analyzing our economy, government policy and society through the lens of cost-benefit’ published in  ‘True Cost’ following is the list of the countries where UHC is currently in place:

Country

Start Date of Universal Health Care

System Type

Norway

1912

Single Payer

New Zealand

1938

Two Tier

Japan

1938

Single Payer

Germany

1941

Insurance Mandate

Belgium

1945

Insurance Mandate

United Kingdom

1948

Single Payer

Kuwait

1950

Single Payer

Sweden

1955

Single Payer

Bahrain

1957

Single Payer

Brunei

1958

Single Payer

Canada

1966

Single Payer

Netherlands

1966

Two-Tier

Austria

1967

Insurance Mandate

United Arab Emirates

1971

Single Payer

Finland

1972

Single Payer

Slovenia

1972

Single Payer

Denmark

1973

Two-Tier

Luxembourg

1973

Insurance Mandate

France

1974

Two-Tier

Australia

1975

Two Tier

Ireland

1977

Two-Tier

Italy

1978

Single Payer

Portugal

1979

Single Payer

Cyprus

1980

Single Payer

Greece

1983

Insurance Mandate

Spain

1986

Single Payer

South Korea

1988

Insurance Mandate

Iceland

1990

Single Payer

Hong Kong

1993

Two-Tier

Singapore

1993

Two-Tier

Switzerland

1994

Insurance Mandate

Israel

1995

Two-Tier

United States

2010

Insurance Mandate

Highest per capita health spending has no relevance to the quality of health services/ outcome, but early implementation of UHC has:

The following table shows, although per capita spending on health is the highest in the US, the number of doctors, nurses and hospital beds per 10,000 population are highest in Cuba, UK and Japan, respectively. Japan also records the highest life expectancy at birth.Thus it appears, by and large, those countries which have an efficient UHC scheme running since quite some time from now are doing better in the health parameters as indicated below, especially, as compared to the US with the highest per capita health spending.

Country

Per capita spending on health (US $)

Doctors/ 10,000 pop

Nurses and midwives/ 10,000 pop

Hospital beds/10,000 pop

Life expectancy at birth
USA

    6719**

26

94

31

78
UK

2815

23

  128**

39

80
Russia

698

43

85

97

66
Japan

2581

21

95

  140**

   83**
Italy

2631

37

72

39

82
Germany

3465

34

80

83

80
France

3420

34

80

73

81
Cuba

674

     59**

74

49

78
China

216

14

10

22

74
Canada

3673

19

101

34

81

** Highest

Source: The Guardian, Data Blog, Facts are Sacred)

The current situation in India:

In October 2010, the Planning Commission of India constituted a ‘High Level Expert Group (HLEG)’ on Universal Health Coverage (UHC) under the chairmanship of the well-known medical professional Prof. K. Srinath Reddy. The HLEG was mandated to develop ‘a framework for providing easily accessible and affordable health care to all Indians’.

The HLEG Report starts with:

“This report is dedicated to the people of India whose health is our most precious asset and whose care is our most sacred duty.”

The HLEG defined UHC for India as follows:

“Ensuring equitable access for all Indian citizens, resident in any part of the country, regardless of income level, social status, gender, caste or religion, to affordable, accountable, appropriate health services of assured quality ( promotive, preventive, curative and rehabilitative) as well as public health services addressing the wider determinants of health delivered to individuals and populations, with the government being the guarantor and enabler, although not necessarily the only provider, of health and related services”.

Ten principles for UHC in India:

Following are the ‘Ten Principles’, which guided the HLEG for the formulation of the recommendations for the UHC in India:

  1. Universality
  2. Equity
  3. Non-exclusion and non-discrimination
  4. Comprehensive care that is rational and of good quality
  5. Financial protection
  6. Protection of patients’ rights that guarantee appropriateness of care, patient choice, portability and continuity of care
  7. Consolidated and strengthened public health provisioning
  8. Accountability and transparency
  9. Community participation
  10. Putting health in people’s hands

UHC guarantees access to essential free health services for all:

Because of the uniqueness of India, HLEG proposed a hybrid system that draws on the lessons learned from within India as well as other developed and developing countries of the world.

UHC will ensure guaranteed access to essential health services for every citizen of India, including cashless in-patient and out-patient treatment for primary, secondary and tertiary care. All these services will be available to the patients absolutely free of any cost.

Under UHC all citizens of India will be free to choose between Public sector facilities and ‘contracted-in’ private providers for healthcare services.

It is envisaged that people would be free to supplement the free of cost healthcare services offered under UHC by opting to pay ‘out of pocket’ or going for private health insurance schemes

HLEG recommends ‘Price Control’ of ‘Essential Medicines’, just like draft NPPP 2011:

In its recommendation no. 3.5.1, HLEG postulated price controls and price regulation especially on essential drugs, which is quite in line with the draft National Pharmaceutical Pricing Policy 2011 (NPPP 2011). The HLEG report says:

“We recommend the use of ‘essentiality’ as a criterion and applying price controls on formulations rather than basic drugs. Direct price control applied to formulations, rather than basic drugs, is likely to minimize intra-industry distortion in transactions and prevent a substantial rise in drug prices. It may also be necessary to consider caps on trade margins to rein in drug prices while ensuring reasonable returns to manufacturers and distributors. All therapeutic products should be covered and producers should be prevented from circumventing controls by creating nonstandard combinations. This would also discourage producers from moving away from controlled to non-controlled drugs. At the same time, it is necessary to strengthen Central and State regulatory agencies to effectively perform quality and price control functions.”

Price control on essential medicines is also in force in China:

Chinese Government has put a cap on the prices of about 300 drugs featuring in their ‘National List of Essential Medicines (NLEM).’ Perhaps following the similar concept both the NLEG and NPPP 2011 have recommended price control of about 348 drugs falling under ‘The National List of Essential Medicines 2011 (NLEM 2011)’ of India.

Another recent report on ‘Free Medicines for All’:

Meanwhile,the working group of the Planning Commission on health, constituted for the 12th Five Year Plan (2012-2017) headed by the Secretary of Health and Family Welfare Mr. K. Chandramouli (now retired), has also submitted its report recently.

The Part II of the report titled, “Provisions of ’free medicines for all in public health facilities … recommends that health being a state subject, all the state governments of the country should adopt the successful and well proven Tamil Nadu model of healthcare procurement.

Tamil Nadu government through Tamil Nadu Medical Supplies Corporation (TNMSC) reportedly makes bulk purchases of drugs and pharmaceuticals directly from the manufacturers through a transparent bidding process, which reduces the cost of medicines to 1/10th and even to 1/15th of the Maximum Retail Price (MRP) of the respective product packs.

As per this report, the total running cost for the ‘Free Medicines for All’ project during the plan period would be Rs. 28,675 Crores and an additional allocation of Rs. 1293 Crores will be required as one‐time capital costs. The contribution of the Central Government at 85 % of the total cost would be around Rs 25667 crores for the entire Plan period.

Conclusion:

It was good to read that Ms. Nata Menabde, WHO country-head, India in her interview to ‘The Financial Express’ dated December 7, 2011 said, “We at WHO have been fortunate enough to be consulted on this (UHC). The meeting at planning commission was very productive and positive and we think the recommendations on the road map to Universal Health Coverage in the country is a step in the right direction.”

UHC, I reckon, will also be able to address simultaneously the critical issue of high ‘out of pocket’ healthcare expenses by the common man of the country. Implemented sooner ignoring the motivated stalling tactics, if any, by the vested interests, could usher in an era of a new healthcare reform process in the country.

That said, the proposal of the UHC in its current form does have some ‘loose knots’,which should be appropriately tightened-up through informed public discourse by the stakeholders in the healthcare space of India, sooner.

Disclaimer: The views/opinions expressed in this article are entirely my own, written in my individual and personal capacity. I do not represent any other person or organization for this opinion.