CA Neeraj Jayaswal, CFO – India, Medicover Group, highlights the role of the Covid-19 pandemic in shaping the non-operational side of hospitals.
Two fundamental changes, apart from business operations, have happened due to the pandemic, said CA Neeraj Jayaswal, CFO – India, Medicover Group at the second edition of Elets Digital Health Conclave held with a theme ‘Reimagining Healthcare with Technology’. “First, the advent of startup companies in the healthcare which is a positive thing for the healthcare industry, including the patients and everybody. Many companies are willing to invest in technology through startups in India or globally. Many companies have grown rapidly, especially supply chain and pharmacy, apart from the radiology area, where startups are showing very promising results. These companies will grow with time to help the healthcare industry in India. Many global standards will come out during the pandemic with the help of IT.”
Secondly, Jayaswal stated, “It has become convincing for hospitals to get loans from banks. Every banker now understands there is a need for hospital loans and I must thank the central government and Finance Minister for the scheme they have brought for financing the Covid institutions at a softer rate that really helped hospitals to set up hospitals in tier-II and III cities.” He was speaking at the panel discussion on ‘Business Transformation of Healthcare Companies during Pandemic: Significant role of CIO’. Co-panellists were J P Dwivedi, CIO, Rajiv Gandhi Cancer Institute & Research Centre; Anuroop Sehgal, Cluster IT Lead (North), Fortis Healthcare Ltd; and Kishor Gojiya, Associate Head – IT, CIMS Hospital Pvt Ltd, Care Institute of Medical Sciences.
Besides, on the operational side, he noted, “These people have adopted new things; the digital gap between older and new employees diminished. In hospitals, experience does matter, so you have older people but they may not be digital-savvy. But, during the pandemic, they have adopted it positively; digital divide gap was bridged.” He added, “One can invest in digital learning. CIOs and operations teams can create a digital library, SOPs, and processes. The IT system can be loaded in the server and then people can log in to learn and if they have doubt, they can visit FAQs related to process, FMS, reports. The FAQs can be updated periodically. Instead of falling back to the IT team or manager, one can access those things and learn these things. So, training is very important as we are in an industry where everything changes every moment; new protocols come and we have to keep ourselves updated. During the pandemic, protocols for treatment are ever-evolving and you have to inform so many people, so that kind of system where we can store data, SOPs, etc, to help frontline workers and employees of the organisation.”
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