Authored by Dr poonam Chauhan and Dr Prema Basargekar

Faculty – K J Somaiya Institute of Management 

Introduction:

The pandemic COVID -19 has suddenly opened the eyes of the world towards role of healthcare system in a country. It had shown that the entire economy can come to a standstill due to certain health shock.

It also created an awareness related to healthcare management as one could witness that few countries, few state as well as few local governments could manage the crisis in much better way than rest of the players.

The reasons lay in having clear directions from the political and health leaders and the core competencies in managing the crisis.

The core competencies which played an important role were decision making at the critical juncture, provision of timely medical care, effective communication, empathetic treatment and effective use of data and information to name the few.

Healthcare is a dynamic and exciting sector with strong potential for creating value to for all stakeholders. It is also very challenging due to complexity and current uncertainty in the economic environment. 

Various forces such as rising use of technology – both in medical science as well as information technology in healthcare, changing regulations, rising aspirations of the consumers make this sector more challenging as well as exiting.

The use-of technologies such as IOT, Big data analysis, Artificial intelligence, digitization, etc. are creating disruptions in the existing business models and giving rise to many start-ups which are bringing new values for all the stakeholders. 

The Indian Healthcare sector

Healthcare comprises hospitals, Pharmaceuticals, medical devices, clinical trials, outsourcing, telemedicine, medical tourism, health insurance and medical equipment to name a few. The Indian Healthcare sector is expanding in all these segments.

The Indian healthcare sector is growing at brisk pace due to its strengthening coverage, services and increasing expenditure by public as well private players. Health insurance is gaining momentum in India.

Healthcare companies are investing in innovative care delivery models, digital technologies and data interoperability to develop robust health ecosystem to prepare for uncertainties.  

The government of India has also increased budget outlay to build healthcare ecosystem. Ayushman Bharat is being adopted for universal healthcare. 

Sector Outlook

Growth of few of the subsectors is given below:

• Hospitals: The hospital industry in India which accounts for 80% of the total healthcare market, is growing at a CAGR of 16-17%. The hospital industry is expected to reach $132 bn by 2023 from $ 61.8 bn in 2017.
• Medical Device: India has also become one of the leading destinations for high-end diagnostic services with growing number of global organizations vying to capture Indian market.
• Diagnostics: The diagnostics industry in India is currently valued at $4bn. The share of organized sector is 25$(15% in labs and 10% in radiology)
• Biosimilars: The market for Biosimilars is rising due to growing prevalence of chronic diseases and increasing aged population in India and globally. Few of the government initiatives such as ‘Make in India’ and the global need for lower cost therapies has led to increased investments in this sector. 

Career opportunities in the Healthcare sector:

The information given above shows a rosy picture about the healthcare sector so as to build one’s career.

At the same time it must be noted down that career building in this sector is challenging. Budding managers hoping to build career in healthcare need to be aware about changing environment, competent enough to understand the impact of new technologies and changing government regulations, agile to bring out changes to cope-up with the dynamic environment and innovative in approaching the new challenges.

Being in the healthcare sector also demands them to have empathetic approach towards societal needs.

It is also required that these future healthcare leaders have an insight about complex Indian Healthcare system and ability to adopt global business ideas and technologies as and when required.

At present there is a dearth of such type of skilled manpower to meet the rising demand of this sector.

K J Somaiya Institute of Management (Formerly K J Somaiya Institute of Management Studies and Research) launched a full time two year management program in Healthcare Management in the year 2018 to bridge this gap.

The program deliberately focuses on healthcare holistically keeping in mind the growing interdependence and integration of various healthcare services and practices.

Along with building core management competencies such as critical thinking ability, global awareness, communication skills, etc. the program also focuses on building competency of integrative thinking in healthcare management. 

One of the great advantage of the program is it has academic collaboration with Imperial College Health Partners, UK. Imperial College ranked 9th in the world in the QS World University ranking 2020.

This association help our students understand not only the latest global trends in healthcare but also how one of the finest healthcare system in the world functions.

We believe that the students learn as much from experiential learning as from the classroom learning.

Hence the course structure is designed in such a way to provide ample opportunities for the students to work with the healthcare organizations. We also have academic collaboration with our sister concern K J Somaiya Hospital and Research Centre where our students get an opportunity to work on concurrent projects.

We have made an academic collaboration with Wipro GE Healthcare India which is one of the renowned healthcare firms to deliver a module on ‘Product and New Business Development in Healthcare’ and to conduct industrial visit to see the manufacturing set-up and research centre in Bangalore. 

The program also emphasizes on building creative thinking and problem solving competencies of the students through various activities.

Few of the subjects such as design thinking in healthcare, entrepreneurship management, emerging technologies in healthcare help students to hone their ideas and also see their feasibility in ground.

Somaiya campus has an incubator Riidl which stand for ‘Research Innovation Incubation Design Lab’ which is an innovation centre and a Tech business incubator in the Somaiya campus. The students are encouraged to develop and test their ideas with the help of this incubator.

• Specific objectives of the program:

1. To enable students with requisite competencies to take the advantages of growing healthcare sector 
2. To equip students with relevant managerial and technical skills to tackle the challenges faced by healthcare industry
3. To update their knowledge about changing business environment in healthcare sector and help them apply different management techniques at the organizational level

• Potential candidates:

1. MBBS students
2. Students doing dentistry (most likely to take up from the survey)
3. Pharmacy students
4. Homeopathy students
5. Physiotherapy students
6. Ayurveda students
7. Eye-care students
8. Students with science graduation background
9. Practicing doctors handling family clinics/ hospitals
10. People looking for change in their careers from technical posts to managerial positions within healthcare industry or moving to non-clinical work
11. People who are into marketing function of the branded hospitals
12. IT employees handling pharma portfolio

The institute is geared for providing a quality education to groom effective health leaders for future India. Potential candidates can take advantage of the same. 

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