Healthcare can be India’s Next IT Sector, says Kiran

The healthcare sector has the potential to be the next IT sector for India, and the country can be the saviour for our part of the world admist the covid crisis, said chairperson and managing director of Biocon Limited, Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw (in pic) in an interview with ET Now on Thursday. “It is already a $100-billion sector, we can make it over a five-fold sector if we want to over the next 10 years, provided we really invest in the sector,” she said.

India is already the pharmacy of the world, she said, and hoped for more engagement of the government’s imagination with the sector. “Sixty per cent of the vaccines that are produced for the world come from India, why are we not really thinking about vaccine diplomacy for the world?” she asked.

She said she believed India can be the saviour as far as this part of the world is concerned at a time when the entire world is waiting for a vaccine against covid-19. “We must invest more in this sector. We do not have faith in our own capabilities. We do not provide enough opportunities to our own healthcare professionals, our scientists, our researchers. We are in fact encouraging them to leave the shores of India,” she said.

The opportunities that are there in the other parts of the world must be created in India, she said. India’s healthcare system has come together and done well in managing the covid crisis, she said, which points to the fact that we have the talent and resources. “It is time that policies have to be in a way as it was done for the IT sector,” she said. It is the time for technologically enabled healthcare, she said. On a question about affordablitity, Mazumdar-Shaw said India has the lowest costs for drugs, medical devices, test kits and so on. “The public at large are made to believe that we are unaffordable and that we are profiteering. We have to respect the fact that we have the most affordable healthcare model. Do not expect the private sector to function below cost. Government has to invest in healthcare, the private sector cannot do that,” she said.