Sustainable healthcare infrastructure is a pivotal component of future ready healthcare delivery systems. Due to high expectations of patients, healthcare providers need to evolve in terms of facilities and services in due course of time. They need to leverage technology to let users experience the best facilities in hassle free manner. But then technology comes at a price, which makes services a costly affair. Providing best services at an affordable manner hit revenue hard. In this wake, sustainability holds huge significance. Experts dwell on various facets of the sustainable infrastructure in this webinar discussion with Dr Ravi Gupta, Founder Publisher & Editor-in-Chief, Elets Technomedia.

Prof. (Dr.) Nitin Nagarkar, Director & CEO, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Raipur, Chattisgarh, said: “We are in the middle of very testing times as the whole world is facing the pandemic. Our country has huge strength which could help us tide over the crisis. We got the first patient on 18th of March and thanks to the entire team we are managing more patients now, catering best facilities. We have created a dedicated COVID-19 facility in our hospital. We have a viral disease lab to test. We also participated in a webinar with SAARC countries to share experience with them.”

He further said: “There are a large number of patients of other diseases who also need care like head injury, heart related issues, and gynaecology. We have 250 patients who contact us on a regular basis through telemedicine. Some of them are follow up cases and some are new. We are still operating on head trauma, orthopaedics, fractures, abdominal emergencies and all. We religiously follow social distancing protocols to keep both patient and staff safe. We support the state government in various training and awareness programmes.”

Dr Manisha Shrivastava, Medical Superintendent, AIl India Institute of Medical Sciences, Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh held the opinion: “In this tough time amidst Covid, these institutions have taken a lead for testing.We have dedicated covid facility–70 beds for covid wards. We have dedicated one building in the institute to screen patients. If suspected patients come, we isolate, test them and shift them to COVID facility as per the results. If negative, they are being counselled for home quarantine. We have also got a 30-bed ICU for serious patients who are referred from covid centres.

“The government of MP has issued directives to work on three fronts to deal with the situation–covid care centres, dedicated covid hospitals, and also tertiary care centres. We have covid task force who work day and night to tackle the crisis. This is also a public health problem which has to be dealt at community level.We are also contributing to community level services, coordinating with many hospitals across the state. We have online services to book appointments with doctors. AIIMS is connected all over India with telemedicine services,” she believed.

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Anil Chaudhry, Managing Director & Zone President India, Schneider Electric India, said : “We all are going through unprecedented times. We are very much following health advisories. Our teams are on forefront working to create facilities and infrastructure. This tough time gives us a lot of learning to be prepared for the future. Infrastructure like power and electricity plays a key role in facilitating users’ experience. This coupled with digital tools to bolster delivery of services. Schneider Electric helps you to translate all your virtual needs into reliable and all time available infrastructure. Infrastructure has to be a certain level of preparedness. In many of foreign countries, there are equal distributions of health facilities in urban and rural areas.”

“India also needs to think this way. We need to create a minimum level of facility–variable and fixed in rural remote areas to tackle situations like this. We need to build a more resilient and variable healthcare ecosystem in the future. We need to look into four critical areas–to build more patient rooms quickly, variable designs in the hospitals, self sustained, and remotely managed facilities for tough times like covid-19.”

Ajay Kumar, Deputy General Manager-IT, HSCC (India) Limited, said “HSCC is developing healthcare infrastructure all across the country. We have more than 100 sites, developing five AIIMS, We work on to develop sustainable infrastructure to hand over complete set up to clients.We focus on IT infrastructure and digitization which hold huge importance. We have started one ENT hospital in Mauritius also, which is the first paperless hospital. We are developing complete infrastructure including modern OT and other specialised services, leveraging technology to enhance patient care.”

“In future artificial intelligence, machine learning, robotics will be leveraged in the modern hospitals. Robotics could be used in assisting doctors, administration, pharmacy, taking care of machines, and safety & security of help desks. We encourage teleradiology and teleconsultations in this covid time especially in north east regions.”

R.S Manku, Vice President- Business Development, HLL Infra Tech services(HLL Lifecare Ltd.), said: “We focus on comprehensive goods and services in healthcare. We are building hospitals including the most prestigious AIIMS Guwahati and Gorakhpur. We are the biggest agency in India as far as medical equipment is concerned. HLL Lifecare is into vaccines, running retail drug stores and diagnostic centres. We manufacture vaccines and drugs. We are the agency nominated by the Ministry of health to handle the procurement of covid equipment on all India basis.”

“All items like n-95 masks, PPE are being procured by us. Corona virus has given an opportunity to leverage new technology–how we can work remotely without having any impact on efficiency and quality. We have learned new ways to connect, to exchange views and best practices. HLL Infra has helped various countries to tide over disaster situations. Best example is Sri Lanka. In India, we redeveloped healthcare infrastructure after the devastating flood wreaked havoc in Jammu and Kashmir.”

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