By Nilesh Gupta

The Indian pharma industry is at a juncture where digital transformation is sweeping the healthcare landscape.

One of the founders of the Indian pharma industry, my father D.B. Gupta, started Lupin over 55 years ago with the belief that no one should be left without the quality care they deserve. His passion led to the creation of Lupin, a company that provides healthcare to millions of patients and exists for people, not just profits. However, it is five decades later that we now have tools to truly deliver on the purpose of delivering quality healthcare to every patient globally-irrespective of age, background, geography or economic strata.

You see so many instances of what will be the standard of care tomorrow already in use today-AI algorithms today diagnose diseases such as cancer with accuracy; pills embedded with sensors used to share real-time data; AI tools detect anomalies in X-rays and MRIs more accurately than traditional methods.

This juncture that the healthcare industry stands at today, is both inspiring and empowering, with digital transformation sweeping the landscape. At the heart of this is one promise-delivering true personalised care. The need of the hour is to now accelerate this through building technologies that work seamlessly, creating the right regulations, and to incentivise innovation.

Harnessing the Trio of AI, Telemedicine, Wearables

2023 was the year the world discovered AI. 2024 was when we started to use it. 2025 will be when AI starts transforming the world. ChatGPT started as something interesting but went on to acquire a million users in its first 5 days (Instagram took 2.5 months). India has the second-highest users of ChatGPT in the world. An early paper in 2024 showed that ChatGPT could pass the USMLE exam necessary for practicing medicine in the U.S. In a recent study, ChatGPT scored 90% when diagnosing a medical condition, doctors who did not use it were at 74%.

On the back of these tools, telemedicine has re-emerged as a powerful lever (it experienced global adoption during Covid-19), providing efficient access, including to those in underserved areas. Telemedicine aids timely intervention and better health outcomes by enabling communication between providers and patients in real-time. The number of online doctor consultations has more than doubled in the last 5 years to 116 million in 2024. Projections indicate that several APAC countries will achieve telehealth adoption rates exceeding 70%.

Wearable devices are redefining patient engagement by providing real-time insights. They enable continuous monitoring, allowing proactive intervention, eventually improving adherence and treatment, and better outcomes. Over 500 million smartwatch users globally utilise their devices to track and improve their health.

This combination of AI, telemedicine, and wearables will revolutionise healthcare delivery and outcomes by creating a seamless, personalised, and efficient ecosystem driven by three factors:

• Proactive and preventive healthcare delivered through continuous monitoring of vitals and early detection of diseases
• Personalised treatment where AI can analyse patterns over time, especially for chronic diseases, to recommend medicine, physical activity or diet changes
• Remote care where patients can share data (either online or comprehensively) and recovery can be monitored real-time

Unified Gains For All

A World Economic Forum report speaks about AI displacing 85 million jobs by 2025, but also creating 97 million new roles. With AI, the ones who will benefit most are the ones who learn how to use it best. Similarly, adopting digital health holistically will not take away, but will empower doctors, hospitals, and insurers to deliver better health outcomes.

For doctors, this means unprecedented level of diagnostics aiding decision-making, detecting patients that need intervention early, and getting continuous feedback-all delivering better treatment outcomes and lower administration burden.

For hospitals, this means fewer re-admissions and efficient resource allocation. For insurers, this means bringing costs down by offering preventive care and data-driven insights. All this propels a movement towards empowered patients, who have access to personalised, proactive care, and better health.

Accelerating Care

The adoption of digital health is not without challenges. Key barriers include the digital divide, concerns about data privacy, lack of interoperability between digital systems hindering data sharing and care coordination, and resistance to change by all stakeholders involved slowing adoption. Lastly, the costs of implementing digital health infrastructure can strain healthcare budgets in the near term.

Addressing these challenges will require belief, and concerted efforts through policy, education and technology development.

Personalising care

At Lupin, our commitment to digital health is channelled through Lyfe, our digital therapeutics arm, founded with the conviction that personalised care is a present-day reality. Through Lyfe, we are bringing the power of wearables, remote management, and AI to cardiovascular patients. Lyfe leverages cutting-edge tools and uses continuous monitoring, enhanced doctor-patient collaboration and AI-driven insights to deliver better health outcomes. Lyfe’s aspiration is to change the way cardiovascular disease is managed in India.

Digital Health 2.0

There is so much we have not talked about. AI holds promise to transform every part of healthcare. Digital Health 2.0 is not a technological revolution, it is a paradigm shift to how we deliver healthcare. It marks a transformative era, blending advanced technologies with human-centric care to build a future where health is more accessible, personalized and more efficient. We are on the cusp of a very bright future that would make delivering quality healthcare to all a reality. We couldn’t strive for a greater goal.

This interview was first published in the Business Today magazine, January 2025 issue