A review of the Health 2.0 India Conference
Tue 07 February 2012
The background
For the past couple of months, I've been working as an independent consultant with a leading social investment fund. The work has mainly revolved around research on the affordable education and healthcare markets in India, and helping the investment managers understand the landscape and opportunities therein. As a part of this work, I had the opportunity to attend the first edition of Health 2.0 India, a conference focusing on the emerging intersection of healthcare and information and communication technologies.
While this would be my first conference on this topic, I was not too unfamiliar with the topic. I think I must have been one of the early signups on Google Health (though I rarely used it, given its primary focus on the US) and through different articles on the topic that have come up on blogs such as Oreilly Radar and others covering the Quantified Self trend. I also have had some direct contact with the topic through the work that First Health was doing on the usage of ICT in rural healthcare (during my time at the RTBI) and my interaction with models such as Mera Doctor and mDhil through my work at Intellecap and independently.
On the conference
Given this background, I have to admit that I went into the conference with high expectations. I was hoping that the conference would provide:
- An insight into the regulatory landscape for Health 2.0 models in India
- Were there any standards/regulations on data transfer/protection/privacy?
- Given that this is India, was there any mandatory licensing?
- Were there any minimum requirements in terms of technology and processes?
- An overview of the different models worldwide and their presence in India
- Insights/discussions on how Health 2.0 could bridge the healthcare gap in the country
- Showcase of Indian Health 2.0 companies
However, sadly, it did not live up to my expectations on any front. Several comments that I've on this:
- At an overall level
- There wasn't any depth to the discussions on stage (except for maybe Anil Swarup's presentation on the successes of the RSBY)
- There were very few insights relevant to India presented. Some of what was discussed might have been interesting for a foreigner new to the country, but considering that the crowd comprised mainly of Indian healthcare and Health 2.0 professionals, it was a big gap
- Several of the people given prominence at the conference, did not come across as being experts and it looked more like they were there as friends of the organizers rather than true subject matter experts
- On specifics
- The Health 2.0 showcase companies had very little relevance in my mind, to the topic that any healthcare conference in India has to cover. Mainly, how can we close the access gap in the country
- The enterprises showcased were focused on areas like Hospital MIS and web-based information discovery (which would be of interest to an educated patient only) which I'm sure are relevant areas, but not directly relevant from an Indian healthcare perspective
- The couple that had relevance were mDhil and Religare Infotech's medical helpline
- There was not any representation of the investor community on any of the panels (and no, Acumen Fund doesn't count as one given their social-first investment model) to get their thoughts on any topic - how they see the regulatory environment, are they seeing a pipeline of companies, what is their perception of the market etc. In fact, I think the only other investor that I saw there was from Sequoia Capital
- Finally, there was no representation from the government. True, Anil Swarup was present but what he had to say was only remotely related to the topic of the conference and Mr Baljeet Bedi from the Telemedicine Society of India could obviously only speak about telemedicine and not give a broader perspective of how the government viewed Health 2.0 and what plans they had in supporting this space to achieve access objectives in India.
Final thoughts
I really think that this conference was a big missed opportunity, not just for the organizers, but also for the larger community of enterprises, investors and experts who are working in this field. Unless there is dramatic improvement in the agenda and the panelists and participants next year, I would not recommend that anybody attend this forum. Especially when there are much better conference on healthcare technology and investments such as those by VC Circle and the Stanford Bio-design Program1.
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Oh by the way, to add even more insult to injury, was the highly disproportionate registration charge for the conference - INR 21500 (around USD 435). They even charged an additional INR 600 for paying with a credit card, which I frankly think, is just downright cheap] ↩
Category: India