2022 WILL HERALD THE DAWN OF A SAFE & HEALTHY ERA
JATIN MAHAJAN Managing Director J. Mitra & Co. Pvt. Ltd.
The author, Jatin Mahajan, is the Managing Director of J Mitra & Company – a global leader in invitro diagnostics, with the highest number of patents in India. He is an astute business catalyst & change agent and a key healthcare industry influencer. He is a decorated patent holder himself.
The bright side of 2021: Your fundamental innovative business approach, which has been helping you to stay afloat or mitigate risk during the year 2021?
The past two years were all about survival. But, unfortunately, the years 2020 and 2021 resulted in gloom, pain, and suffering. The pandemic hit hard and ruthlessly, costing lives and devastating families.
The aftermath of the pandemic showcased increased empathy, tolerance, and resilience. It was about people’s beliefs and faith in their organisations. It was about providing job security and financial stability to the workforce, which is always the most critical aspect of any organisation.
We have always been self-reliant and implemented robust supply chain & logistics, which enabled us to glide through. Our earlier efforts to nurture domestic raw material suppliers also ensured that we did not face a problem when others struggled with raw material supplies.
Economics is on a recovery path. However, industry CAGR has lost its significance for the time being, so what are points of reference for business planning and forecast?
The pandemic phase has been about survival and collective social welfare. The business was anyways affected, but the focus for most companies has been about ensuring employee welfare, providing them with the safety and security of a containment-free environment. Even in our case, while we continued operations on account of being an essential healthcare services company providing Covid-19 detection kits amongst other products. While providing a safe zone for the employees and the products was critical, another critical factor was to ensure that we stood by our employees to address other aspects like – medical facilities and support, financial issues, psychological & mental stress.
Profits and growth continue to be critical factors. Catering to business continuity in case of mass disruption has become an essential aspect.
Sometimes we win, sometimes we learn. What are your key achievements and learning in the year 2021?
At J Mitra, our effort has been to bridge the gap between patient and diagnostic solutions and provide the right solutions at the appropriate time. During the pandemic, we offered a boost to our R&D efforts and launched four unique Covid-19 test products – Covid-19 Ag Microlisa, Covid-19 Neutralizing Antibody Microlisa, Covid Kawach IGG Microlisa and Covid-19 (IGM + IGG + IGA) Microlisa. We also launched 3 Elisa readers and Washer – in our quest to fight the pandemic.
We aggressively marketed the iquant – India’s first portable diagnostics solution developed in collaboration with IIT Madras for the rural and resource-scarce settings. This solution has the capabilities to conduct nine separate Diagnostics tests – Dengue NS1, Dengue IGM, Dengue IGG, Hba1c, TSH, T3, T4, Vitamin B12, Vitamin D, PCT and CRP, and this has been a great hit.
How to reboot the healthcare ecosystem across all tiers and medical care?
The focus is on affordable quality healthcare closer to the point of care to avoid stress on the existing setup. Furthermore, to ensure that quality healthcare is available to the masses, even in remote areas, there has been a massive push on telemedicine and mhealth.
During the pandemic, telehealth became the most potent disruptive innovation in healthcare. All four modalities of telehealth - live video conferencing, store-and-forward, remote patient monitoring and mhealth played a crucial part in ensuring the availability of reliable healthcare. Especially in the early days of the pandemic, healthcare providers offered telehealth for patients by any means necessary — some simply falling back to standalone Zoom meetings to provide video visits until they could adopt and implement more integrated solutions.
Thus, the first reboot has already taken place. And the massive healthcare budget announced during the Union Budget 2021 will further strengthen healthcare infrastructure in the country.
How do you see 2022 as a new ray of hope into healthcare?
The government has made massive investments in the past two years to strengthen the healthcare infrastructure in the country. In the latest Union Budget 2021, the government doubled healthcare spending to ₹ 2,23,846 crore. In addition, it set aside ₹ 35,000 crores for the development of two Covid vaccines, in addition to Covishield and Covaxin.
₹ 64,180 crores are allocated for Atmanirbhar Swasth Bharat Yojana – over six years. The program fund is dedicated to developing primary, secondary and tertiary healthcare.
Primary interventions under the programme include Support for Health and Wellness Centres; Setting up Integrated Public Health labs; Critical care hospital blocks; and strengthening NCDC. In addition, it will help develop capacities of primary, secondary & tertiary healthcare systems, strengthen existing national institutions & create new institutions to cater to the detection & cure of new & emerging diseases. With this sort of commitment towards healthcare, the future looks bright for the masses.