As India’s hospitals expand in scale and complexity, manual processes are fast becoming a bottleneck to safe, efficient, and consistent care delivery. In this exclusive interaction, He PengHui, Managing Director of Swisslog Healthcare APAC, in conversation with Dr. Asawari Savant of Elets News Network (ENN), discusses why automation is now a cornerstone of resilient, future-ready healthcare systems. Edited excerpts.

How do you see automation transforming healthcare in India, especially in areas like medication management and diagnostics? How does Swisslog Healthcare fit here?

India’s hospital landscape is rapidly evolving toward larger, multi-specialty and multi-site healthcare networks. This means we’ll see larger scale, complexity, and heightened expectations for safety and efficiency. As this scale increases, reliance on manual medication workflows is a significant risk because of potential errors, delays, and operational inefficiencies. Robotics and automation are transforming medication management by centralising medication storage and dispensing, automating picking, preparation, and distribution, and enabling end-to-end traceability from the pharmacy to the point of care. 

We see automation as a critical enabler for the next phase of Indian healthcare. This is where the Swisslog Healthcare offerings can solve problems before they arise. Our solutions address complexities with comprehensive pharmacy automation and medication logistics solutions that manage medication flows holistically across the hospital. This approach not only improves safety and traceability but also frees clinical and pharmacy staff to focus on patient care rather than logistics. As diagnostics, precision medicine, and clinical decision-making accelerate, we ensure that medication supply chains and internal logistics operate with the same speed, accuracy, and reliability. 

With India’s growing healthcare infrastructure, what role can smart systems play in reducing operational bottlenecks and improving patient outcomes?

As hospitals across India expand rapidly to meet rising patient demand, we are seeing significant pressure on pharmacy operations and medication transport. Especially in large hospitals, pharmacies dispense tens of thousands of doses per day, and bottlenecks commonly emerge from manual dispensing processes, fragmented medication storage across departments, and inefficient ward replenishment cycles. These challenges are compounded by a shortage of trained pharmacists and increasing reliance on manual workarounds that slow care delivery.

This is again where we come into the picture. Swisslog Healthcare addresses these structural issues through smart, integrated systems that automate central pharmacy operations, enable intelligent, demand-driven medication distribution to care units, and streamline internal transport for faster, more reliable turnaround.  Our solutions help hospitals accelerate treatment initiation, optimise medication inventory management, reduce medication errors, and ensure smoother, more reliable patient care pathways.

What trends or innovations in hospital automation do you believe will shape the next decade of healthcare delivery in India, and how is Swisslog Healthcare preparing to support hospitals?

Indian hospitals are increasingly moving toward end-to-end medication automation across both inpatient and outpatient settings as they scale into large, networked care-delivery systems. Hospital groups today operate at a level of size and complexity where network-wide standardisation of pharmacy operations is no longer optional; it is essential to ensure consistent safety, quality, and cost control across facilities. At the same time, hospitals are seeking tighter integration between automation, hospital information systems, and pharmacy information systems to support real-time visibility and decision-making.

Future-ready hospitals in India will require automation platforms that can support high throughput, deliver accuracy at scale despite workforce constraints, and provide operational resilience in the face of surging patient volumes and supply variability. Swisslog Healthcare is preparing hospitals for this next phase by offering transport and pharmacy automation solutions that can be deployed in phases as hospitals grow, supporting both centralised and decentralised pharmacy models, and leveraging proven global product innovation that is thoughtfully adapted to the operational realities and growth ambitions of Indian healthcare systems.

What are Swisslog Healthcare’s expansion and collaboration plans for 2026 in India?

We see 2026 to be a pivotal year for our growth in India, driven by a clear shift in how hospitals are approaching automation-enabled infrastructure as they scale and consolidate. We are seeing a pronounced increase in demand for advanced transport and pharmacy automation across the country. This is particularly evident among greenfield hospitals, where transport and pharmacy automation are now being designed from the outset. Equally, a growing number of established hospitals are reassessing legacy infrastructure, recognising that incremental upgrades are no longer sufficient to meet today’s safety, efficiency, and workforce expectations. In parallel, large hospital chains are seeking to standardise medication workflows across multiple sites, creating a compelling case for scalable, interoperable automation platforms.

To support this evolution, we are deepening our commitment to India by expanding local capabilities. From system design and planning to implementation and commissioning,  or after-sales servicing and long-term performance optimisation, Swisslog Healthcare is prepared to support healthcare growth in India. Our approach is deliberately collaborative. We work closely with hospital leadership and operations teams to build pharmacy operations that are resilient, clinically aligned, and fit for the scale at which Indian healthcare now operates, enabling them to extract sustained clinical and operational value from their automation investments.

What are the biggest opportunities Indian healthcare providers can adopt in enabling “Healthcare for All”?

For Indian healthcare providers, the ambition of enabling “Healthcare for All” is inseparable from the challenge of scale. Expanding access is not only about adding beds, but it also depends on whether hospitals can deliver medication safely, accurately, and efficiently at volumes that reflect the country’s demographic reality. One of the most significant opportunities lies in modernising medication workflows. Across the healthcare system today, pharmacies are already operating under immense pressure, and manual medication workflows quickly become a constraint as patient loads rise. These processes introduce variability that is difficult to control, increasing risk and placing strain on already stretched clinical teams.

By contrast, strong medication infrastructure allows providers to decouple growth from risk. Automation enables hospitals to manage higher prescription volumes with accuracy, materially reducing medication-related errors. It also allows pharmacy teams to be deployed more intelligently toward patient care, optimising workforce utilisation rather than simply adding headcount. In this sense, medication infrastructure is not a secondary operational concern. It is a foundational enabler of equitable healthcare delivery at scale sustainably.

Also read: Blending Innovation, Clinical Governance, and Compassion to Redefine Modern Healthcare

How do you see automation integrating with existing systems to create a seamless patient experience?

Automation delivers its greatest impact when hospitals begin to see themselves as integrated systems rather than collections of departments. The future hospitals will be organised not around silos, but around flows of information, of medication, and ultimately of care. In that context, automation works best when it connects processes end-to-end rather than simply replacing individual tasks. When central and satellite pharmacies are connected to hospital and pharmacy information systems through automation, and when these in turn are aligned with internal logistics and transport networks, medication moves through the hospital with far greater coherence. Prescriptions are fulfilled more quickly and accurately, clinical teams are better synchronised with pharmacy operations, and delays caused by handoffs or manual interventions are reduced.

Patients rarely realise the benefits of automating the transport of critical items or automating the management of pharmaceuticals directly, yet their outcomes are enhanced when their caregivers are better enabled. What they experience instead is its outcome: treatment that arrives when it is needed, fewer interruptions to patient care, reduced medication errors, and a journey through the hospital that feels calmer, more predictable, and better organised. That, ultimately, is what seamless care looks like in practice, and why it is that the solutions from our organisation are unparalleled.

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