Healthcare is a complex multi-stakeholder ecosystem and requires professionals with diverse cross-sector knowledge and experiences to drive any meaningful change. With this idea, we set on to build India Young Healthcare Professionals (IYHP) to break the silos and bring together emerging leaders from different healthcare domains on a common platform. Through various initiatives, IYHP promotes cross-pollination of ideas, knowledge, and expertise, and seeks to empower young healthcare professionals to become well-rounded and better equipped to solve for India’s unique healthcare challenges. Our work serves as a catalyst to accelerate India’s journey towards the achievement of UN SDG III- “Good Health and Well Being for All at All Ages”.
Healthcare is a multi-stakeholder puzzle only solved by collaboration
The India of 2020 stands at a unique juncture. It is one of the fastest-growing economies of the world and with its demographic dividend, it has the potential to become the third-largest economy after the US and China by the year 2050. As a nation, it has much to be proud of — the unflagging economic growth of the last few decades, and the alleviation of poverty accompanied by significant improvements in health outcomes — but the journey is far from over for a nation of 1.3bn people, as critical gaps and challenges in healthcare still exist, which if not solved for, can dampen what India is looking forward to, in the coming four decades — the economic growth and productivity boost resulting off the demographic dividend.
India’s demographic dividend is the envy of the ageing world — populations in the developed economies are turning old whereas around 90% of India’s population is under the age of 60. Not only this, more than 50% of India’s population is under the age of 25 and 65% of the population remains under the age of 35. This demographic structure can be a huge proponent of economic growth in the coming times.
This brings optimism to the whole dialogue but it is imperative to understand that this demographic structure alone cannot work wonders and push for economic growth. The case in point being, the several nations of Asia, which experienced demographic dividend along with Latin American counterparts in the late twentieth century but the growth in Latin American GDP was only two-fold as compared to Asian nations, which experienced a seven-fold growth in their GDPs. So, the growth narrative is based on an assumption that amongst other things like quality education and employment, India will be able to provide quality healthcare to its young population. Or in other words, India’s demographic dividend stands to be productive and will contribute to economic growth only if its workers remain fit and healthy.
But to achieve this feat, challenges for India are far from over. According to a 2018 Lancet study, India currently ranks at 145th among 195 countries in terms of quality and accessibility of healthcare, worse than Bhutan and Bangladesh. The neonatal and maternal mortality rates remain high, and India, surprisingly, ranks behind Liberia and Nepal in infant mortality rates. The problem of malnutrition in children aged 0–5 years persists leading to stunted brain development and lifelong health problems. This is a drain on the healthcare system’s resources and also negatively affects the subsequent adulthood productivity which will have severe economic implications for India.
India has committed to UN SDG and Universal Health Coverage by 2030. Will it be able to achieve this feat?
The chronic disease crisis continues to loom over India. India is currently undergoing an epidemiological transition leading to an increased burden of chronic non-communicable diseases over communicable diseases. 60% of the deaths can be attributed to diseases like obesity, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, cancer, and mental illness, and these are expected to grow sharply by 2030. Heart attacks are known to strike early in India, almost a decade earlier as compared to the average first infliction in the West. To give you a rough idea of the scale of this emergency, India is expected to lose 18mn productive years of life in 2030 due to untimely deaths in the 35–64 age bracket. And in economic terms, according to a World Economic Forum report, India is expected to lose $4.6tn by 2030 on account of chronic NCDs.
If all of these gaps are allowed to progress unchecked, they will continue to inflict heavy damage to India’s overall health profile and economic growth, ultimately leaving it in an irreversible state. The fillable gaps like India’s underdeveloped primary healthcare system are a cause of concern as many of the population’s healthcare problems which can be easily nipped in the bud lead to unnecessary complex care and expenses later on. So, India’s demographic dividend only stands to be realized if we can address fundamental gaps like these and nurture our human resources well. And for this, it should be a government’s priority to increase both public and private investment flowing into Indian healthcare.
While COVID-19 has refreshed the priorities of the Indian state and there is unbridled optimism for a sweeping change in healthcare, it will still be largely upon the citizens to collaborate to solve for India’s healthcare challenges.
There are problems, there are challenges, but there are also opportunities, and there is broad consensus that healthcare in India as a sector has not been able to attract the best of India’s young professionals to start-up and solve for it.
Healthcare in India, more than ever, remains in dire need of dynamic leaders and professionals who are armed with diverse cross-sector knowledge and understanding to innovate and drive advancements in health quality and accessibility in the face of threats that are on track to derail India’s big dreams.
The percentage of young professionals who have got involved with healthcare entrepreneurship (in some way that is outside the traditional consumer health domain) remains minuscule compared to young professionals’ entrepreneurial involvement in other sectors. One reason for this, which got highlighted in our conversations with young professionals across the board was the lack of solid understanding of the healthcare’s multi-stakeholder ecosystem along with the lack of a diverse professional network across healthcare subsectors, that healthcare as an industry demands to successfully start-up, and scale to achieve measurable impact. This does not come off as a surprise as healthcare is a hierarchical and status quo abiding industry that benefits from experience and connections. But we wanted to solve for this at IYHP.
Scaling up India Young Healthcare Professionals (IYHP) and its initiatives is imperative to supercharge India Healthcare ecosystem. At IYHP, we understand fully well that successful careers in healthcare require navigating/operating at the cross-roads of regulatory, policy, technology, intellectual property/patents, research and development, all the while keeping in mind the unique understanding of the requirements of the 4Ps- Patients, Physicians, Providers, and Payers. Everything at IYHP is designed keeping this in context.
Healthcare is one of the most sophisticated and complex industries on the globe. It affects every human and it is pushing the limits of science and engineering. The industry needs people who can frame the issues from societal, political, and technological views- and can do so in an integrated way. — Ginger L. Graham, former CEO, Amylin Pharma
IYHP brings emerging leaders across healthcare disciplines on a common platform to promote collaboration and innovation. Our goal is to enable young professionals to understand healthcare issues and opportunities from a wide variety of stakeholder viewpoints so that they can effectively design the solutions/interventions of tomorrow required to tackle India’s diverse healthcare challenges and opportunities at scale.
IYHP: Catalysing Relationships and Collaboration to Solve for India Healthcare
With its initiatives and efforts, IYHP is committed to developing young professionals who are well-rounded and better engaged so they can use their careers and expertise in healthcare to multiply the impact on the communities around them. IYHP believes that smart, young, hungry and determined professionals can not only accelerate change in this status quo industry but also leverage technology to implement solutions that thrive in low-resource India specific settings to improve the overall healthcare system and outcomes.
IYHP is already a community of 300+ emerging healthcare leaders. Stay tuned as we launch and scale up our presence and initiatives. Follow our LinkedIn Page for updates, and if our mission resonates with you, do share your thoughts at info@iyhp.org. We appreciate feedback, and would love to engage with you!
Shaurya started India Young Healthcare Professionals (IYHP) as a non-profit initiative in early 2020 with the mission to empower young healthcare professionals with the resources to drive meaningful change and positively impact the healthcare sector in India. He works as a Chief of Staff to CEO and Corporate Development Associate at a leading US-India venture-backed MedTech innovating for the global wound care market.
He is super excited and feels privileged to build this with some of the most dynamic folks involved with healthcare in India: Ria Golecha, Divanshu Kapila, Pallavi Chadha, Roshan Tathed, Manav Fakey, Ujjwal Sahni, Shrrinesh Bala, Vikram Patel, Dipesh Chawla, and Udith Krishna, each one of whom is positively impacting healthcare in his/her own unique way.
Last but not the least, this initiative would not have been possible without the continued inspiration and support from a couple of our friends who help the org to jump through hoops from behind the scenes — Siddarth Jain, Prafful Garg, Anirban Mukhopadhyay, Sanchi Khurana, Devan Raghunathan, Anubhav Goyal, Parth Sarthi Sharma. Thank you for doing what you do.