The class of IIM Lucknow - IPMX09 was privileged to have Professor Dr.

Sundaram
Natarajan, CMD of Mumbais Aditya Jyot Eye Hospital as its first guest faculty. Dr.
Natarajan has been conferred with the prestigious Padmashree Award in 2013 in
recognition for distinguished service in the field of Medicine. He is one of the
most high profile eye surgeons and has received accolades from around the
world. He has maintained a keen interest in academics throughout his clinical
practice. He took two sessions on, Innovations in Healthcare delivery for Bottom
of the Pyramid Consumers and IT enabled healthcare delivery: Aditya Jyot
Experience.
The first session began with a comparison of the key Health indicators (Life
expectancy, infant mortality) of India with other countries. The key challenges as
identified by him were to cater quality and affordable healthcare to a diverse
population using innovative delivery models against the backdrop of high
inflation and low paying capacity of a vast section of society. He also emphasized
on the critical role of the government, on the importance of clinical research and
on the need to skill the manpower with professional training and expertise in the
HealthCare.
Dr. Natarajan mentioned the role of successful Indian community insurance
schemes such as Arogya Bhagya Yojane, Yeshasvini and SEWA Insurance in
improving accessibility to affordable Healthcare. Similarly, he cited examples of
successful Public Private Partnership models nationally and drew comparisons
with the Rural care models of Korea and Thailand. He stressed on the need of
huge investment in the field of HealthCare to serve a population of billion plus
people.
As part of the second session, the class was enlightened on the latest
technological advancements playing a key role in meeting the legacy
infrastructural and skilled manpower shortages. Dr. Natarajan cited how both the
disruptive and non disruptive innovations were providing services that were new
or significantly improved with respect to their characteristics or intended use.
He praised how the digitalization has expanded the HealthCare industry and how
the startups such as Practo and eKincare.com helped in integrating the patient
medical records and putting them at one place. He talked about the
implementation Electronic Clinic Health Record (ECHR) in the Aditya Jyot Hospital
and how it benefitted both the physicians and the patients.