As Covid continues to spread and cases become more and more rampant, healthcare technology is undergoing a massive transformation for good. With virtual interactions gaining impetus every day, telehealth is the new norm that has taken the world by storm. MGM Healthcare CEO Harsh Manian says with useful insights and flourishing experiments, this industry is all set to achieve new heights
Telehealth essentially entails related services and information via electronic or telecommunication technologies, providing essential care for patients remotely when the provider and patient are not physically present with each other.
Harsh Manian, the Chief Executive Officer at MGM Healthcare, has been working in this field for a very long time, besides being a healthcare management professional with two decades of unparalleled experience. He has started several multi-specialty quaternary care hospitals and medi-city projects for Manipal Group, Fortis Healthcare and India – Parkway Pantai and was responsible for few landmark clinical programmes in India and South Asia.
Breaking the monotony:
Growing up in a society that readily accepts prosaic careers over emerging ones, Manian was agog towards healthcare, abstaining himself from filling his boots with hackneyed ideas, he did his MBA in healthcare administration from IIM Ahmedabad and “never regretted since”. MGM Healthcare is a leader in telehealth and keeps its patients as the core focus. Besides belonging from a medical background, the initiators of this company had two medical schools in Pondicherry and Chennai and wanted to proffer current healthcare widely. They have been providing quality services for a year now and look forward to expanding their network and serve better. Manian adds: “MGM Healthcare is a brand in the making and firm clinical background is its foundation,” coupled with a good faculty and embracing new programmes besides spreading them worldwide is what makes this brainchild better. Currently, holding the first position in heart transplants in Asia and the third worldwide, it imparts lung transplant and finest liver programmes too.
Overcoming challenges:
Manian says during these “changing times, technology in healthcare is going through a transformation too”. Besides currently working on a lifelong transplant programme with the University of Japan, they are developing ideas for robotic ICU. “Being a new developing brand, there is a lot of scope to experiment,” he states while reflecting on the growing start-up scenario in India.
Good markets, new ideas and young minds constitute a booming start-up and India has an abundance of all of these factors and has become cardinal in the flourishing start-up businesses worldwide since changing mindset has led the young generation more aligned towards entrepreneurship.
The paradigm of change:
When discussing meetings being shifted to virtual conferences and the rise of technology usage more so to combat Covid-19, Manian rightly points out: “This allotment of technology was long overdue.” Earlier, new initiatives like telemedicine were appreciated but in the current situation, people have become aware of its need and positive aspects. The last two decades have been tiresome with massive experiments taking place all over the world. Giving the example of the food delivery app ZOMATO, Manian opines “nowadays one can calculate the calorie intake of a person by going through the food that the person orders and by collecting data one can easily survey demographically the food habits of different people.” Similarly, as technology and telemedicine go hand-in-hand, a sea change in healthcare systems are visible leading us to a better tomorrow.
