Concerning the fact ‘whether the business of diagnostics be left to only Diagnostics players?’, a panel discussion was organised at the 1st BW Diagnostics Summit at The Imperial, New Delhi. The discussion was moderated by Nina Kler, Editorial Lead – Wellbeing, BW BusinessWorld and brought out key facts and figures regarding the diagnostics regimen.  

The discussion initiated with a focus on timeliness and quality required in the diagnostics, DK Gupta, Chairman, Felix Hospital agreed to the fact that hospitals should have a 24/7 setup for diagnostics certified from NABH & NABL along with collaborations of doctors to make the tests effective.” 

Dr Somesh Mittal, MD & CEO, Vikram Hospital emphasized on the fact that hospitals should have the infrastructure of conducting 90 per cent of the pathological tests in-house and only 10 per cent of the tests which requires expensive equipment should be outsourced. “This will improve the timeliness and quality of the diagnostics and it will also increase the trust of the doctors as they can keep an eye on the standards and quality of it”, he further added.  

Focusing the importance of ecosystem in the hospitals, Dr Ritu Gard, Zonal Director, Fortis Healthcare said, “Every hospital work in different ways and even in the different hospital of the same chain requires different diagnostic infrastructure and hence diagnostic partners of that hospitals need to understand this fact.” 

On the urgency of collaborations in the diagnostics, Arindam Haldar, CEO, SRL pointed as 85 per cent of the diagnostic sector in India is unorganised and hence becomes an underlying cause for the poor quality of the tests. “We are living in an era of shared economy and should encourage the collaborations within the diagnostics regimen to increase the quality and generate shared valuable data.”