When India had got independency, average life span of an Indian was 45 years. Thanks to improving healthcare facilities, now the average life expectancy is 69 years. (Link: http://niti.gov.in/content/life-expectancy) While the healthcare industry enabled this glory, it too got fetes to celebrate for itself. With doctors at the top of social respect and income hierarchy and pharma entrepreneurs becoming billionaires, healthcare & pharma sectors are set to become a lot bigger than what they are today. Here are some of the major drivers:
1. Expanding
senior population:
The population of those aged above 60 living now is higher than ever in the
past. Due to age related issues, their need to visit doctors for medial
assistance would be much higher than the young population. As the demography of
India changes from young to old, this phenomenon of higher medial expenses will
only intensify.
2. Increased
awareness about healthcare:
Couple of decades ago, checking blood pressure, sugar levels, blood tests were
not as common as now. For preventive care, routine health checkups have become
the norm these days. Also due to lifestyle issues and crappy food, getting the
diseases early in their lives is also a common factor leading to more frequent
checkups and increased consumption of pills.
3. Ability
to pay and insurance coverage:
Slowly over the generations, people are being uplifted from poverty and their
income levels are improved to afford healthcare costs themselves. For those who are
still poor, Govt. does its bit to protect them. And there is a wider insurance
coverage available now helping people to take care of unforeseen and higher medical
expenses. All these have improved the affordability. With demand side becoming
steady, supply of side of hospital network and drug stores too have improved
and have a wider reach as well.
All
these growth drivers will only intensify with time and make the healthcare
industry even bigger. There would be other topics of interest such as
contribution of Indian healthcare industry to global phenomenon and the dark
side of the industry involving doctor-industry nexus, scams at big pharma
companies and large population being social engineered to benefit the pharma
industry etc. They would become material for separate blog posts.