CARE WITH QUALITY

No matter how advanced health care is today, at its heart must be its humanity, reiterated the medical fraternity at THE WEEK Best Hospitals Awards 2024

- ANJULY MATHAI

One day in 2008, Vic Gundotra, Google's then vice-president of engineering, got a call from Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. "I've been looking at the Google logo on the iPhone and I'm not happy with the icon," said Jobs.

"The second O in Google does not have the right yellow gradient." Such was his attention to detail and commitment to quality. "When you're a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you're not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it," Jobs once said. "You will know it's there.... For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through."

Twenty years ago, THE WEEK was the first magazine in India to acknowledge the importance of quality in health care by ranking the best hospitals in the country. Today, it remains the only magazine to offer a credible hospital ranking. "In 20 years of its Best Hospitals survey, THE WEEK has not asked anyone for any favour," said the magazine's Chief Associate Editor and Director, Riyad Mathew, at THE WEEK Best Hospitals Awards 2024 in Hyderabad on December 6. "We feel it is not the right way to take such important information to our readers. We seek to make sure that the entire process is as transparent as possible, and that's why we have here today the very best people from the finest institutions."