 Well, ladies and gentlemen, first up, we've got the most exciting and awaited panel discussion for the day, which is health tech from hospitals to homes. Technologies like artificial intelligence, automation and Internet of Things have calculated into almost every aspect of healthcare today. Wouldn't you agree on that? And how do we see the future unraveling? Well, with more healthcare, mobile apps in the making, be it booking an ambulance in a click or getting tests done in a day without even stepping outside, do we really see cloud healthcare services becoming a thing and much more? Well, with this, it is my honor to now invite Ashish Rajaj, Chief Marketing Officer, Narayana Hel, Sanjeev Nayar, the Chairman and Founder of Queroots Wellness Solutions, Anuja Alarwal, Head of Marketing, Sanofi Pasture and Pritim Pritam Alex, Head of Marketing Communications, Apollo Protein Cancer Center with the session chair being Harbindar Narula, CEO, BW Healthcare World and BW Wellbeing World. Well, it is an honor to have all of you join us and it just stays with all our smiles on the screen and the infectious energy that we are looking forward to your panel, Mr. Harbindar and Narula. I think it's time for you to take forward as the session chair and continue the live later. Thank you, Madhna. You know what? Technology has changed the way we look at healthcare today and its allied services that are today accessed, delivered and paid for. It is amazing to see how today the customer that is the patients and their families are becoming more informed than ever before and also have more choices than they had ever before, which means that healthcare providers need to make efforts to not only share more information about who they are and what they do, they also need to give a reason why should the care seeker choose them. To discuss this modern phase of healthcare marketing, we have with us the panelists that have been introduced. So without wasting too much of time, I will jump into asking questions because I have a list of questions that are really, really something that I really want an answer for. So let me begin with asking everyone. So one of you can choose to take the lead in answering this question that how has technology enabled healthcare to evolve to a point where diagnosis and care to a large extent are brought to the patient's doorstep today? So I'll start. Hi, everyone. Thanks for having me on the panel as well. So it was in making the healthcare industry over as many as decades we all know has been into a different orbit and to moving into consumer centricity slash the patient's centricity, it had to happen. And there were tries that happened say six, seven years back, but ultimately we all know the movement happened in the last two and a half, three years. And it has actually made it come into the center because everywhere around us from 2011, 2012, everything around us has been started moving to consumer first. It was just a time that for healthcare also to move into that direction. And now it's beautiful. See, imagine how as a consumer or a patient, everything is coming to my doorstep, whether I live alone, whether I'm an old age person, or I don't have anyone in that emergency situation to take care of me, I still have something to take care of my health. So that movement was supposed to happen, but thanks in the last three years, it has been a great shift. So Anujaji, would you want to add to this? Sure. I think I have two more. I think great messages, Ashish, just to add, I think two things. Firstly, the whole tech revolution has while being fueled by healthcare industry, there is a huge role that has been played by the technology industry as well. So whether we look at apples of the world or Samsung, so the technology has enabled far more advancement and awareness amongst consumers at their doorstep. Secondly, there is a huge and a very exciting ecosystem of healthcare startups and tech startups in India who've enabled and enabled the consumer to have healthcare available at their doorstep. I think the two coming together, along with of course the healthcare boom that has happened, has enabled consumers today to be far more in control of their own health, be far more aware and these solutions are now available at doorstep. I would still say far more in metros and mini metros, but access is the next step for health tech in my view. Sanjeev, do you have a view on this? Yeah, absolutely. As I have been, we have been working in the field of preventive health and wellness. So I would rather say that more than the conventional medical systems, I think the preventive health and wellness, the growth has happened primarily because of the backup of technology. There is no doubt about it because generally, whenever it comes to empowering people or generally whenever it comes to health, the first thing common people think about is a doctor or a hospital or a clinic, they never think that they are responsible for their health. So and also there has been lack of medium or the methods to reach out to the consumers for products or services which are actually targeted towards preventive health. But I would rather say that because of these technological disruptions which has happened and as more and more people started coming into this online media, online videos and all those kinds of things, social media, which has created a huge level of awareness among people about, yes, I can also take charge like Ms. Anuja said, empowering people when they also should know that I can take charge of my health. So that has happened only because of the technological advancement which has happened right now, where we have right from the data science, which is helping us to understand deeper level of data and also using deep learning techniques like the artificial intelligence. And you can connect that with devices like the various IOTs. So it's going to be a different world altogether when we present a small, you know, maybe a 1 centimeter by 3 or 4 centimeter ECG 6 lead machine to a person. It's a wow factor, like in the sense that, oh, I can do that at home, I can put it in my pocket, you know, ECG, ECG mission, I can put in the pocket and walk around and do it. So it's actually, I would rather say thanks to technology for this kind of a major, major advancement for preventive health. Got it. Thank you so much, Sanjeev. Alex, do you have a point of view on this? Yeah. So in this era, in our phone, what we have is all OTT services, right from prime and Netflix and now online delivery, of course, hospitals and telemedicine also made their way. So that has clearly showed us the way a phone can operate. Earlier it used to be, okay, let's go visit our family doctor immediately when you get a fever. Now when you get a fever, immediately what you do is pick up your phone, either Google for a solution or use an app. So now instead of Googling where we present is in the app model. So something which has been evolving over these years and I think, you know, healthcare and I would say not even technology, mobile phones is our closest buddy to, you know, for this evolution. Got it. Ashish, let me come back to you. Now, one thing that pandemic has taught us is that the patient care can be provided at home, right? Now do you think that the home care and the home services are finding increased level of acceptance because, you know, these services have been in existence for many years, you know, so the care provider was ready with it, but the acceptance levels were very low. Now, of course, the need got, you know, you know, came into forefront because of pandemic, but is there a role that marketing communications have played in growing this acceptance? Absolutely. As much as the environment was conducive for all the tech and telemedicine and home care solutions. I think marketing has played a great role in terms of providing the right kind of information for the consumer to be looking out how to utilize these services. Those kinds of content coming to us, how can I live with COVID or how can I do a teleconcertation as basic as that? And if there is a requirement of habit change, I think marketing has been the best solution for making that habit change in consumers. So that has been seen, a lot of healthcare brands came together and produced a lot of content which could enable such influx of consumers in the right space in terms of using all the digital solutions. So I think it has a tremendous role, which has been played over the last couple of years, but it doesn't end here. If I've got the way of telemedicine, it has to keep growing. So more and more use cases have to be told to the consumer and the right form of usage has to be developed. So Preetham, let me come to you. What we have seen is that India is going through a phase where healthcare is plagued with suspicion from the point of view of the patient. What is it that the marketers are doing to overcome this challenge? Or do you see it as an opportunity for new age healthcare providers who are now providing direct to consumer or direct to patient services? How are you using it as a advantage for your organization? So yes, first I would say as you always quoted us as a brand which always stands out. Any brand which stands out with respect to services, first consumers look at that. And how are we going to provide the best of the care? So our clinicians, our doctors are the next set of people who stand out to be unique amongst people in the market. And third, I would say the awareness which brings out the services and the technology and the best of treatments which are available in our country itself. So putting all three together, I think we will be able to differentiate ourselves and then use this opportunity to enhance and to promote what is best we have and what is best our consumers need. So I would see this as an opportunity rather than a challenge. Sanjeev Ji, pandemic has raised levels of consciousness among people in general. And this has led to prevention and which has further led to overall wellness or well-being. At least people are more mindful about it. So how is we use using technology to add quality of life to humans taking preventive healthcare to the mainstream? I think wellness or preventive health rather I would rather say wellness has been a growing industry for the last maybe two decades in this country. Globally also but especially in India from since 2000 we have been seeing a lot of nutrition supplement companies, fitness centers, meditation centers, yoga studios coming up big way. At the same time, there has been many of these medical practitioners who have been sceptic about the kind of growth of wellness products because people started popping in so many different supplements and they are jumping into different types of fitness programs. So we really don't know whether that is good for them or not popping in all these kinds of different supplements and is there a highly recommended thing because it's all OTC and primarily sold online. Even though I have been also selling nutrition supplements, that's the time I also started realizing the importance of personalization. Personalized health is so critical and thanks to the genomic personal genomic advancements which just happened in the world since 2003 since the human genomic you know science is open to the world. There's been many companies which has been working. So 2018 that was the time we started working on this project of epigenetic lifestyle modification based on genomic and also metabolic and assessments. We started with genomic assessments. We created a major 250 health condition assessments you know predisposition assessments primarily but later we found that that is not giving that kind of a good result because even if you get this report and say that you have got risk for so many different factors, it is actually not helping you sometimes it may scare you also. So that's where we added the metabolic assessment into it and our team of doctors curated the questions and we created a mobile app a very user-friendly mobile app and then we brought in machine learning to converge or rather correlate this 250 genomic condition and also 70 metabolic conditions and now what we are coming out with is a highly personalized lifestyle modification plan which is something like an operating manual for the rest of the life. It is not that it's a solution for everything but at the same time you know exactly what kind of diseases for which you are carrying a high risk number one. Number two is that you also know that which are the factors whether there's a nutrition factors or some other genetic factors which are going to cause this may be based on that taking some you know I would rather say informed choices that is what WHO is talking about this kind of process informed choices you would be able to prevent or postpone the possibility of this kind of diseases. The advantage or rather the what we have seen the last three years is that words like you were talking about the post-COVID or COVID period the words like DNA words like genomic words like genetics which became very common so I would rather say that you know even though we did our MVP the kind of test project in 2019 and we commercially launched in 2020 November I would rather say that you know we got such an amazing response in the market which I'm sure that you know it wouldn't have happened maybe in the pre-COVID because the post the COVID has made people to understand themselves they want to take charge they don't want to leave the responsibility of managing their health to somebody else. So if there is a possibility and also there has been so many incidents like you know people go to keto diet and get their kidney damaged somebody goes to the gym and go for the fitness you know on the on the gym floor they collapse so people started realizing the importance of personalized health and there you know the question you asked to I think Ashish I would rather add that because marketing communications has played a major major role in this all-space because earlier when it comes to healthcare or medical it is it was taboo you know it's not like you cannot market but now the advantage is that you have so much of content and great content writers out there so they create beautiful contents which are useful for the public you know it's not you are not selling any product or service you are actually providing information just leading them to this kind of you know value added services I would rather say you know the environment the timing is so beautiful in this country for you know the services like what we are doing right now. I totally agree with you Sanjeev ji that you know we are moving more towards community building rather than selling as an objective and selling actually has is an outcome of building a community or a tribe around what you are doing. Anuja you spoke about you mentioned about the the lack of services in tier 2, tier 3 so my next question is pointed towards that you know internet we marketeers coined this term that the world is becoming smaller the geographic boundaries are blurring similar thing is happening in the field of healthcare because of technology the gap that existed between tier 2, tier 3, tier 1 is now getting bridged with the help of teleconsultations, telehealth etc. Now how do you see the future of healthcare in these smaller towns and unraveling keeping in mind that tech could replace the gap quicker than the infrastructure development. Absolutely I think great question in my view and I don't think there's one answer to this in my view what is happening today I think Ashish and Sanjeev ji also spoke about the content explosion that is happening and with access to internet there's far more awareness that's available today and far more information available to consumers at all strata's. I think the challenge continues to remain around one trustworthy information secondly how to have access to the right facilities for example we do a lot of communication for consumers especially in being in the vaccines area along with the doctor the consumer and his own awareness as a healthy individual is far more important and it is important for us to reach to him so that he knows these are the preventable diseases that he should be protecting himself and the family against and across all tiers. Now the challenge continues to be for example the innovations that we try to do are on languages so we try to go as vernacular as possible and that's a step for us to be heard far better in smaller geographies for example I remember we were doing a Facebook live on one of the one of the therapy areas and my father-in-law said how many people actually listen to this in English and so from a consumer perspective I think we have to be far more consumer-centric to know what these consumers are looking for in terms of reliable information and information that makes sense to them access for access to information is not a challenge anymore I think it's more about being customized to them and then giving them the access to these services for example a lot of doorstep services today exist only in certain pin codes in the country and is not really available at a tier 3 level so those would be some big advancements that could lead to a step change. You know what the biggest reason that came about and it has been probably published in a lot of studies that the biggest reason for dissatisfaction in healthcare that the patients usually complain about is a doctor does not hear them out. Doctor does not give the full time, does not listen to us, how will he care when he does not listen to me. So now in this new age healthcare where technology is taking precedence over physical connect with the healthcare provider how do brands keep their communication and messaging relevant to create a human touch in the world which is led by technology. So Preetam or anyone who wants to answer this. I can actually add a line here. I think this is something very close to our heart in terms of communication what we at least try to do is to make sure that while doctor continues to remain at the center of the communication how do we make it like you right here it's a mundane job for a doctor to repeat the same explanation after explanation and to a consumer it is the most important thing. So we actually have done a lot of solutions which are some of which are in MVP stage also to create counseling kits and counseling tools both digital and physical which takes away a lot of burden from the doctor in terms of pre-soaking the customer. There was also another piece of work we did to look at top 40 questions that people search on Google actually and then create a kit which actually contain answers to all of those in forms of articles and videos and that was pre-soaked into the to the incoming patients who had an appointment for however this is a very ideal world scenario. We don't have all tools and equipments at all places but wherever this is done it trees up a lot of time from the doctor in the interaction with the parent or with the adult and really spend time on more meaningful conversation which a parent is looking for. So yeah I think it is highly critical and very underrated at today's point in time. Feed them back to you. So I have two submissions in this basically whatever technology comes in patient or a patient really wants to interact with doctors and for example our consultations in our unit the time is around one and a half hours. So literally one and a half hours doctors are sit and make sure you know they clear their doubts and everything. So technology even if it's a virtual consultation which happens across the world it still goes for hours. The doctor patiently make sure conveys the right message because the complexity of the treatment such that the patients are so much aware of all the treatment right from side effects the plus the minus is what the medicines the drug names the injections be it everything with costs they are up to date. So their clarification their doubts has to be addressed by the doctor so the consultation goes for hours. So technology does support us but however in person when the patient is with the with the doctor there's always a human touch. In fact Apollo's tagline is touching lives it not just just the tagline really we have an initiative called tender loving care right from doctors nurses housekeeping everybody goes beyond their duty to provide that extra care for the patient you know that definitely gives the personalized attention and care for the patients. Definitely that human touch however robotic surgery and everything comes in you know that human touch is definitely required for patients especially when they are coming with a series of illness. So I would say doctors plus a human touch will definitely make a difference. Sanjeev Ji how do you manage it in your business? I think you know if you look at this all depends on just like what freedoms are it depends on the kind of diseases also but majority of the cases if you look at it you know people are suffering from one or the lifestyle diseases whether it's diabetes or you know the metabolic disorders. I think in these kind of cases also doctors have to spend a lot of time explaining all this kinds of basic things primarily because the patient knows that's a major thing right now the patient knows. Now here I think I just want to refer the the report which has come out from Deloitte in 2019 which talks about the future of healthcare. What they are communicating is very clearly is that new roles has to emerge. I think there is a space for a new role which is which can be a health coach a certified health coach or a wellness coach or a lifestyle coach whatever it is because that could be the question for if it's a critical illness as of course doctors doctor has to directly handle but the same time when it is management of lifestyle diseases once it is you know identified once a protocol is being created around it and then onwards the kind of follow-ups and the kind of you know those kind of things there need to be a new role has to come up which is if you look at the western countries it has come up very strongly the health coaches are really doing a lot of job a lot of work especially they are reducing the load for the doctors and I think in this country also it is coming up right now we have also done the same thing because when we are actually giving this genomic and metabolic report and which gives a lot of information about their future diseases that a lot of people can you know they become anxious to know what should I do and they wanted to talk to a doctor and all those things. So we have come out with a program in association with Indian Association for Functional Medicine where we are actually giving certification for lifestyle coaching where we are we have done about 150 people till now in the last one year we have certified lifestyle coaches they do this hand-holding you know for a period of 12 weeks so which has really helped a lot for the customers and also we have seen that the level of satisfaction the clients get is very high so I think new roles has to emerge because the patient knows. So Ashish I want to move to you with the next question. Sure. Yeah, no you are someone who's moved from a high tech space to a traditional healthcare organization so I'm sure you're going to be doing things differently in the traditional space. Now when we look at the mobile apps our concepts of marketing towards customer acquisition start changing. Now what are some of the marketing strategies in your experience that you have seen that are so unique and atypical to a traditional healthcare industry and what is it that you think you will be doing at a place which has been into traditional form of healthcare? So rather than saying that how this has helped at the tech point of view first I'll cover that apart from a digital healthcare space point of view. See the user acquisition has of course in the last couple of years for digital healthcare has moved from just content only to pricing and discounting that is how the consumer psyche has behaved now that when I get the habit of utilizing a product or a benefit or a service we all hunt for discounts or the category itself start developing discounted communications. So whereas when I started with digital healthcare it was more about product service content and within three years it reached to discount services and the whole communication and user acquisition game changed. Now in traditional workspaces or the traditional healthcare branch I'll say that it is still at a very very granular and a physical level and still your product service is the key to get the user on board. Now how do you add the digital space of it is the main movement that what traditional workspaces require but a brand like NH I think was already at the cusp of this you know this this beautiful meeting of solving for digital world and I would say that the physical meeting the digital in terms of right product and service and just taking from your last question it is it has been historically for every healthcare brand as doctor as a center thus we had to develop so many FAQs so many cheats in terms of consumer to understand but the change that is required right now is to build for the consumer first so that is one too many solve doctors or I'll say historically our general physician why we used to have a better connect with them because they used to talk in our language not telling us Tavi not telling us angioplasty not telling us something else they used to solve for us correct so that is what the change is required even at a digital level why because your product and services top notch it's just the consumer needs to understand the solution better you have to talk in their way so that becomes your strategy got it got it thank you Ashish Anuja my next question is to you and we'll keep it brief because we'll be running against time when it comes to vaccines creating awareness becomes extremely critical it is probably the most efficient way towards prevention of disease vaccination right with this new age marketing communication do you think it is becoming easier today to educate people than it was earlier with mobile being accessible to everyone and what are some of the ways that you are engaging with people which is different from before so I think two great questions in one it is definitely becoming easier and I think the biggest reason besides internet being available is covid with covid coming in the whole awareness around vaccination has gone up significantly earlier the assumption was that vaccination or the or the belief was that vaccination is only for my child maybe a child who's around two years or younger and my doctor will guide me on vaccination today the whole explosion around adult immunization is far higher you'll be surprised to know India has an adult immunization rate of less than 2% for a disease like influenza which is actually quite commonplace and the vaccine is fairly available for decades having said that I think it is far more awareness around vaccination today that has been driven by covid in conjunction to the technology that has led to a far more openness around it in terms of what we do as vaccines how do we look at marketing differently I think we have identified a two-pronged approach we look at consumer at the center and see who are his influencers he primarily has two influencers one is a doctor himself and second since we deal largely in pediatric vaccination the second influencer is this community of mothers so there are thriving community of mother influencers and digital opinion leaders so we work with the two of them together individually and also together and in conjunction we have a lot of consumer focused activities and presence online which allows us to reach a mass media secondly also have the influencers talk to the consumers in the language that they understand similar to the physician thing that Ashish mentioned and this coming together allows for a lot of questions and awareness around vaccination for example a recent facebook live that period we had a lot of questions not just on influenza but also on general immunity waning around kids earlier no mother of a child four-year-old would really consider that my child is not protected against you know certain diseases but with covid and such social awareness events that a lot of organizations run today especially in preventable health this is becoming our new mainstream strategy and we've seen it work very well got it got it sinjiji my question to you is that you are marketing a very innovative service and you call it epigenetic lifestyle modification and it like you mentioned it is based on personal genomics now how important is marketing communication in making this reach to the masses and have them understood in the manner that you want them to understand I think out of all the people who are out there in the panel would rather say ours has got the maximum kind of you know dependence on the marketing communication because this is whatever we are doing all everything is innovative and new to people even the fact that you know people come to know when the oh I see my DNA can be decoded what is this DNA all about what is gene what is this chromosome you know it's everything is new so and a very complex science and the complex subject has to be simplified and put it across to the public that is where a brilliant communication strategy is required I think whatever we could do till now in the last one and a half years is because we have been really focusing on that we have been really focusing on you know breaking down complex information into simple you know understandable formats with the help of lot of you know some of our media friends also so that has been our continuous exercise till we are working on it I think for us marketing communications is the key to reach out to the people and educate them got it so my my last question and closing question because we've already run over time I want each one of you to give me that one healthcare marketing trend that we cannot ignore in the next 12 months so starting with freedom I would say communicating treatment diagnosis and the technology which we have through meme campaigns so which is something hospitals have not touched I did do a couple of meme campaigns which is again I'm sure Ashish is going to have a challenge in the traditional way of healthcare thinking but it did work so something where memes can be used to create awareness on diagnosis treatment awareness and the out possible positive outcomes in a treatment so I would say memes is one something which I will take it forward Sanjeev Ji one trend for this year I would I would rather say it's connected to data and when it comes to data there are two things which will be you are going to see as a major trend which will be happening this year onwards one is going to be the AI on one side and blockchain technology on the other side so that's going to be major drivers awesome Ashish preterm you took away what I wanted to say but yes overall of course I was thinking from a trend point of view we have always seen how entertainment sports we started with loving these kind of genres because we knew a lot BTS behind the scenes I think from a if I have to think right now I think it's it's it can be one of the bigger bigger engagement tool from a marketing point of view where your content is for BTS telling people what actually happens behind the room for them to have a greater acceptance or trust for the brand so that could be that could be one of one of the trends so to me I think the biggest game changer for us is going to be personalization both for doctors and for consumers today the balance is shifting towards consumers consumer is wanting to know what is relevant for him or her from the whole clutter that exists so to me I think personalization and that is the hardest thing we have to bring in data together like Sanjeev said but that is really to me a big opportunity awesome I mean you know my key takeaways from the last set of answers that you gave is that you know if you have to look at what we need to do and really need to do well is to look at data personalize our communication engage with people and focus on local languages so that we are able to communicate better and be understood better right thank you so much each one of you for taking out time to be on this panel I think this is a very very beautiful topic and I could go on and keep this panel on for the next one hour but I'm getting calls to now be quiet right so thank you so much everyone it was lovely talking to you absolutely thank you so much to all our panelists thank you for your valuable time today thank you once again