The Covid-19 pandemic has created unprecedented disruption for the global health ecosystem. While it has highlighted the weaknesses in public policies and healthcare infrastructures, it also brought in the urgency to discover new approaches to respond to the pandemic and subsequent crisis. FICCI – KPMG in India report, on Covid-19 induced healthcare transformation in India, that highlights the primary areas that underwent transformation as a result of the pandemic and underlines strategic recommendations with respect to key focus areas that require immediate deliberation and action to accelerate the transformation triggered by the pandemic. While the report makes a detailed review of the key interventions and policy implementations taken up by the Government of India, in association with state governments and active participation by the private sector, it analyses how the pandemic helped the country identify the whitespaces in the healthcare ecosystem, carrying significant scope for innovation and reform, be it in terms of technological solutions, financial equity in health coverage or manufacturing capacities. The key recommendations listed out by the report included setting up mechanisms for financing “Healthy India”, accelerating health systems strengthening, augmenting capacities for national surveillance and pandemic management, creating a battalion of future health workforce, encouraging greater private sector participation and support and lastly, embedding digital health to bridge systemic gaps. The report emphasizes on the need for increasing public health spending on healthcare and fostering innovative health financing models, exploring make-shift and need-based alternative healthcare infrastructure models, investing in more dynamic and efficient pandemic management systems, among others.
