Patient-Centric Innovation – Catering To Future Needs

Manoj Saxena, Managing Director, Bayer Zydus Pharma, talks about how technology has become an essential tool that complements the personal and physical interaction with a healthcare professional to help patients lead a healthier life

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William Osler, the Father of Modern Medicine said – ‘A good physician treats the disease; a great physician treats the patient.’ To me, this succinctly explains the benefits of putting patients at the centre of treatment and for this, patient-centric innovation, that prioritizes the safety and well-being of patients is fundamental.

Over the past years, the healthcare industry has been witnessing a seismic shift in the way it has approached treatment and diagnosis. Today, the patient is the pivot around which innovations occur, be it in R&D or using technology to ensure healthcare is simplified and accessible. The new approach is also more focussed on ‘prevention’ wherein the industry is now looking at delivering holistic end-to-end healthcare solutions.

Shift in healthcare demographics is fundamentally defining how the healthcare industry needs to engage with the consumer/patient. India has more than 600 million young people and how they look at healthcare is going to define the very future of this industry. India also has a huge aging population and this will lead to an industry focus on specific solutions catering to the segment of ‘healthy aging’.

In our patient-centric approach, Bayer has kept the millennials as well as the aging population in mind as it moves towards developing novel solutions based on the principles of technology, artificial intelligence (AI), biomarkers and/or robotics among others. Technology is now an essential tool that complements the personal and physical interaction with a healthcare professional (HCP) to help patients lead a healthier life and it will continue to play an increasingly important role in the future.