Budget 2020 should aim to create healthcare facilities in small towns, rural areas: Navia Life Care

By Gaurav Gupta

"We would like Government to partner with healthcare startups to implement their projects and help them establish quality care for the people. The budget should aim to create healthcare facilities in small towns and rural areas. Ayushman Bharat is a nice step towards universal healthcare in India but better healthcare facilities need to be implemented. There is a lack of doctors in public centres and are currently not able to serve. Technologies for doctors like video conferencing and diagnostic tools help the doctors to diagnose the patient and assisting with services across the country. The government needs to allocate an appropriate budget for the development of the healthcare ecosystem in the country. To provide good quality healthcare in rural India needs to be taken care of like building healthcare infrastructure in rural and remote areas. The government must help the startups to grow through the implementation of tax benefits to angel investors for investing in the startups and to reduce the GST for the new entrepreneurs.

MoHFW came up with the National Digital Health Blueprint in July 2019, we hope that the government would take significant strides in that direction with specifications in the budget towards the implementation of digital health in the government hospitals.

Last year, the then Finance Minister announced that the Government of India has envisaged a national program for artificial intelligence (AI) in a bid to leverage the technology and take it to the masses, we believe that there would be a bigger contribution in the form of budgetary allowance towards that. We hope that there would be specific guidelines given to government agencies on prioritizing the implementation of AI-driven technologies in their organizations and departments."

(Gaurav Gupta, Co-Founder, Navia Life Care)