Covid-19 triggers preventive healthcare sector growth

India’s preventive healthcare sector, which includes fitness and wellness, foods and supplements, early diagnostics and health tracking, is projected to reach $197 billion by 2025 from $93 billion in 2021, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 22%, says an industry report.

Now the preventive healthcare sector accounts for approximately 36% of the overall healthcare industry and as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the sector is expected to grow at a CAGR of 22% during 2022-25, as compared to 15% for the curative sector, says the report by strategy consulting firm Redseer Strategy Consultants, in collaboration with Chiratae Ventures and Amazon Web Services (AWS).

A survey conducted among over 1,000 plus individuals reveals at least 40% of the respondents were highly inclined towards preventive health. Another survey conducted with a group of 300 plus health-conscious individuals (HCIs-households with the highest number of consumer durables owned, and with the highest level of education), reveals they actively track different aspects of their health such as lifestyle, physical wellness, and more, to maintain and prolong wellness.

These HCIs are familiar with health monitoring devices and apps and use them regularly to monitor their health. Further, the study revealed these HCIs spend on an average between ₹4,000 and ₹10,000 on various preventive healthcare practices annually and are also willing to pay up to 50% more in the future, says the study.

It said over 40 preventive healthcare technology (“HealthTech”) startups have raised around $1 billion in funding over the last three years to tap the preventive health opportunity across segments such as nutrition management, condition management, lifestyle monitoring, health checkups, and mental and physical wellness. They are leveraging cloud computing to build and scale their applications, which generate, digitise and analyse vast amounts of health data using advanced technologies such as internet of things (IoT), data analytics, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML).

Over 30% of the top 40 funded preventive healthtech startups leverage AI/ML for use cases such as medical image analysis, document extraction, chatbots, personalisation, and health risk prediction. The rollout of Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM) will further augment the availability of data and utilisation of these technologies, predicts the analysis.

"We have invested over $150 million in healthcare companies in India, such as Cure.fit, Redcliffe, HealthifyMe, Smiles.ai, HealthPlix, Onco, and others, who are revolutionising care delivery in nutrition and wellness, cancer, genomics, and other critical areas,” says Sudhir Sethi, founder and chairman, Chiratae Ventures.

Cloud technologies like machine learning, analytics, and Internet of Things have the potential to open new channels to help monitor health and wellness, decrease the cost of care, improve collaboration, make data-driven clinical and operational decisions, and enable faster development of new therapeutics and treatment paths, says Kumara Raghavan, head – AWS Startups India.