 They're ordinary men and women who take on extraordinary roles as they work tirelessly to give us a better life. Best medical minds come together to create state-of-the-art infrastructure and technological advancements in their pursuit to deliver quality health services. We trust them with our lives and that's why they're the healthcare evangelists of India. In this healthcare series, we will take you on a behind-the-scenes journey into some of the top medical institutions of the country. Showcase the facilities they offer and bring you medical breakthroughs through real people and their life-changing stories. We begin our healthcare series with the country's third largest healthcare group, the Manipal Education and Medical Group. A name that's been synonymous with excellence in education for over 60 years. They entered the healthcare sector in 1991 with its flagship Manipal Hospital in Bengaluru and it is today a network of 15 hospitals providing comprehensive care that is both curative and preventive in nature for a wide variety of patients from India and across the globe. I think medical education and healthcare go hand-in-hand. I think Manipal has experimented with this very beautifully. We started off with a medical college which is one of the most renowned medical colleges and universities in the world now and we have certainly grown very much in the healthcare industry now. We started off with this flagship hospital here and now we have over 15 hospitals, close to 6000 beds in different locations of India and also in Malaysia and Nigeria. Located in Bengaluru, which is popularly known as the Silicon Valley of India, Manipal Hospital lives up to digital excellence in its day-to-day operations. One of the guiding philosophies of launching this digital hospital was that customers should be able to interact with the hospital through any channel of their preference. Similarly in the hospital, we want people spending less and less time doing administrative work and more and more time with either a doctor or a lab or a diagnostic test, which is why they have come to the hospital. Manipal Hospital is paving the way for digitization in the medical sector by developing various mobility solutions that bring the entire documentation process for patients on their fingertips and from the comfort of their homes, thereby easing the time spent in hospital. It does require a registration of only once and post that once I enter my password, everything is being taken care of. I can select a doctor, I can select my department, I can select it for me or my family member. I can even make the payment here. It's so convenient. Once the ID is generated, I can just walk into reception, just show my ID and they'll take care of the rest. I need not wait for long runs, I did not do any paperwork. One of the very cool innovations we have done just a few weeks ago is called Manipal Health Express. Once they have downloaded the app and suppose you have a medical emergency, just by clicking one button in the app, you get a direct video conference with our doctors in the emergency room. The emergency room expertise is available in your pocket no matter where you are in the country and imagine a situation where somebody has had an accident, somebody is lying on the road, you are stopped to see them and you don't know what to do. You can easily stream that video to RER and our doctors can guide you of what to do. You may end up saving a life. Another patient-centric feature of the Manipal app is the Health Library, which encapsulates a lot of medical content so that anyone can access it and get information on any disease. This information is further corroborated by videos of doctors answering commonly asked questions by patients. While the emphasis on digitisation at the Manipal Hospital is a boon for patients who can store medical records and access lab reports online, it is also a game-changer for doctors and the backend staff. There are a majority of patients who come over here and they forget to carry medical records and in that case what happens, we have to start fresh. But because of digitisation, all they need to be is physically present and have their logon ID. Once that is fed in over here, the entire history, the entire records, the entire medications, the treatment, the management, investigations is displayed right in front of you. We are very familiar with how to run a hospital but this is, we have stretched our own thinking and we have challenged ourselves to truly bring it to the 21st century and make it as easy for the patient and customer as possible even though internally it becomes a bit harder for us in the beginning. Precision and time efficiency are the two main benefits of technology and Manipal Hospital has over the years extended the implementation of technology to surgical procedures as well. In 2014, when robotic surgery was in its nascent stages, Revathi took a leap of faith when she came to Dr. Soma Shekhar, oncologist and specialist in robotic surgery. When I came here, it was like major concern for me. So I consulted many more doctors, you know, the second opinion, third opinion, fourth opinion. Everybody said that the line of treatment is at par with any global treatment, you know, wherever you go, you will get the same treatment. The doctor's name, you know, per se, everybody suggested that it should go because his expertise matters and that's what made me, you know, come to Manipal. When she actually came to me, she had a curable, but little advanced but curable, third stage low rectal cancer. So what is the main motto was to cure her and also to preserve her sphincter and the nose so she doesn't have a permanent back, which is a disability many times. So this is how she presented to us and she had various options in open operation, laparoscopy and robotics. But as we all know, the robotic surgery is the highest beneficial thing. Cancer surgeries are very long, 7 hours, 6 hours, 5 hours, 10 hours, 11 hours. So you have to stand and perform with the God given eyes, which is possible to see in a blind area, wearing all the headlights with two hands. Now imagine that if suddenly the nature says that I give you four arms and I give you a power in the eye where you can see the body, cancer cell, normal parts, 12 times magnified. And then you have a laser, you have a harmonic and you have all the gadgets available and beauty is you don't have to stand, you can just sit in a chair and operate. And most important is all these are done with a keyhole of 8 mm to 10 mm. So it's not just for, then imagine a patient just walks next day and then sees that, okay, I just have a small cut, I have not cut and I'm not having a pain. So this is something which has actually revolutionized cancer treatment. Ravati's surgery was successful and today she's completely cured of cancer and is leading a healthy family life. Several years back when she came, when she came, I was the only centre. So when you have a new thing, always that apprehension is there. Is it right? Is it experimental? A lot of misconception, you know, many people. So trust in an era where only 1% of surgeries in India were done by robotics because I was the only guy doing at that time. It takes a phenomenal courage. I always believe that she has one of the best results maybe because of her positive attitude. Least demanding acting and least expectations, she just had a faith. So these are something which is very rare. You know, every surgeon would be blessed if all my patients are like that. I choose robotics only because of this. Because I wanted to live a quality life and, you know, the doctor had explained all that to me. So in my case, I was like, it was a boon for me. I'm also a diabetic so obviously there were the scars where internal scars were also not much and as a patient, you know, the pain was very less. Pain management was also very good. I mean, all combined in one, I feel this robotic operation has worked for me very well. Another path breaking digital technology adopted by the Manipal Hospital is IBM Watson. This is an intelligent system which is curated by Sloan Kettering wherein all the data which has been published and genuine papers, they have all been actually fed in this Watson. And if I enter a patient's data for breast cancer, stomach cancer, lung cancer, intestinal cancer, cervix cancer, these are the cancers for which it's running right now. It will match with the data that has been fed into Watson and whichever studies have shown the best results. That is what Watson will then show. It gives everything, the dosage of the drug, the side effects of the drug, what that regimen would overall give to the patient, how it would be beneficial to the patient in terms of progression-free survival, overall survival, what are the relapses, everything is given there. Manipal Hospital is committed to patient safety and has proactively taken steps to use technology to the advantage in improving the quality of care given to patients. One such system is known as Massimo, which is especially designed for patients freshly out of the ICU. The patient nurse ratio being five is to one in post ICU care. This technology allows each nurse to monitor the vital parameters of each patient from a central station and be forewarned of deteriorating health, which allows immediate action to address an emergency. Reaching out to almost 25 lakh people a year, the Manipal Group of Hospitals not only focuses on technological advancements, but is also dedicated to one of its core values, that of clinical excellence. It has, over the years, built a significant committed clinical and healthcare skill pool of over 2,000 doctors and 6,000 nurses. For any organization to survive and prosper, I think there are two aspects. One is you have to keep up with the times, which is not just innovation and technology, but also with personnel, because it's the people who run the hospitals or any other industry. I think we have focused very much on human resources and we have certainly focused very much on technology and innovation. With a pool of skilled specialists and latest technologies, Manipal Hospital is well equipped to handle the most critical cases in different departments. Hence, two years back, when a 13-year-old Swarag and his family travelled all the way to Bengaluru from a village in Kerala, Swarag's parents were confident that their son will get a new lease of life. Swarag was diagnosed as a Thalassemia major, so it's a genetic condition. He was born with a defect in the blood production. He was found to have very low hemoglobin right from 6 months of age and has been requiring blood transfusions to survive right from that time. And this is a disease of which only one cure is available, which is bone marrow transplant. Otherwise, they are dependent on blood transfusion throughout their life. Though language was a barrier, with the help of an interpreter, Dr. Ashish Dixit communicated the medical procedure to Swarag's parents. The bone marrow transplant is not a surgical procedure, it's a medical procedure. The procedure is that we need to remove the old bone marrow or old blood cells so that we can create a space and get the new bone marrow in. So the removal of the old bone marrow is done by giving high-dose chemotherapy. Once that is done, then we will take the bone marrow stem cells from the donor, which is usually taken as a harvest from the bone marrow. Swarag was lucky to find a perfect donor match in his younger sister and this helped expedite the treatment. It is a very, very dedicated care that is required during bone marrow transplant. So on an average, their stay in the bone marrow transplant unit is between 20 to 25 days. Bone marrow transplant unit is just like a room with a TV and Wi-Fi available. If somebody doesn't have major issues or major complications, it's like they stay in the hotel but only differences, you can come out of the place. Today, Swarag is absolutely fine with no requirement for transfusions or medication. He goes to school like any normal child. Something that really touched us was that the entire village Panchayat, the entire village contributed to the funding for the bone marrow transplant for the child. And even now, when they come from their village, quite a lot of time, the buses, they take them, they get free rides coming here. Even here, the stay and all is usually done by one of our staff and it simply just makes our belief even stronger that if there is a possibility of having a good treatment and a permanent cure and a child who needs it, a fund crunch may not be the only reason not to take it. With its flagship quaternary care facility located in the heart of Bengaluru, five tertiary care, nine secondary care across five states, today Manipal hospitals successfully operate and manage close to 6000 beds and cater to around 2.5 million patients from India and overseas every year. The overall experience has been wonderful. It's almost like coming back to someone who we can really trust plus the doctors here are so friendly. Even if they are such big doctors over here, but still they behave and the way they talk to the patients, it's like they are just a family member to us. I'm coming from Mozambique to treat my daughter because she's born with some hole in her heart. Then I search on the internet and I got the name of Manipal Hospital. We now have 10 days after operation and my daughter is okay and the experience is very nice. Namaste. Manipal Army Service. What is your name? One of the critical initiatives of Manipal hospitals is MAS or Manipal Ambulance Response Service which provides an ambulance service with an intensive care facility. MAS ambulance is equipped with latest technology and well-trained technicians to handle any kind of emergency. Today the major problem or a challenge in India is accessibility and affordability. For both of this to be addressed, technology can add a lot of value. For example, within India we have about 55 ambulances placed very well whereas in Bangalore itself we have 30 ambulances placed in different locations of Bangalore and this hub receives the call. Last year almost about 70,000 calls this small room handled and more than 7,000 patients we transported them to various medical institutions. After 60 glorious years in healthcare, Manipal hospitals believe that it can continue spreading its services and care to even larger numbers through its social arm, the Manipal Foundation. Founded in 2002, Manipal Foundation has offered hope and support to marginalise people from all over India and neighbouring countries. Manipal Foundation is an independent entity of our group. From all the education and healthcare sector, we work with Manipal Foundation to help the people who are lesser fortunate in the society. The Manipal Foundation came to Lalitha's immediate aid when in November 2016 her young son fell from the first floor of their house and injured his head and was recommended a neurosurgery by the doctors at Manipal Hospital. This was a case where the child had a fall from the first floor and was brought directly to the ear and what happened was the doctor said he has to undergo surgery immediately but since the patient was not so effort-able they started thinking what to do about it. So then they were referred to me by the financial counsellor for some financial help and then we threw some donors whom we have contacted with. We contacted them and they gave us some funds through them. The donors had called and they visited here and they saw the baby and the money has been given for us. From that support only my baby is still okay. Adding to its healthcare delivery is the Manipal Hospital's recent branch at Whitefield in Bengaluru city which stands out for its state-of-the-art infrastructure and facilities. I think and all of us in the organisation strongly believe that hospitals should be like the hospitality industry. You should feel like you are entering a nice hotel where you have very nice people taking care of you and enter a hospital. From the time customers step foot into a hospital till the time they recover and leave they interact with a series of hospital personnel and it is these employees who form the backbone of a hospital ensuring it's smooth functioning. Sometimes the patients will come with depression and sometimes they'll come and talk to me. So whatever, I can make them comfortable. I do that. Then after that again they'll come and speak to me. They'll say, Madam, you spoke to me. The day I was relieved. Each day I step into the ward, you know, it's kind of attitude for me. I will think that what I can do it today. Today for my patient. The Manipal group value each staff. They value each staff by engaging their provisions. By appreciation, some award functions. They are giving award for employees. By that, it's a given tick. They are giving a lot to the employees so employees are giving back. I've been associated with Manipal Hospital for the past 20 years and I'm in touch with the customers from 96 till today. It's a word of mouth which spreads across and they keep contacting me no matter whatever it is. I'm always there for them. I attend the calls even in the night to AM and I come there whenever they're required. Manipal certainly wants to grow. We certainly don't aspire to be the biggest or the largest based on numbers. But we certainly would want to be known as the ones who deliver the best health care for the patients which is we want to be very, very patient centric. We want to be ethical, patient friendly and also have a safe atmosphere for the patients in our hospital. Quality health care is the need of the are. A good health and happiness is what all of us desire for ourselves and our loved ones. Health care is one sector that has the power to change lives and bring hope and there are some in the country who are doing just that. We call them the health care evangelists of India.