Healthcare PulseDigital health, decoded · by Mayank Madhur
Healthcare PulseDigital health, decoded · by Mayank Madhur
Practice Leader, Healthcare & Life Sciences · HFS Research · Chennai
I write about how healthcare actually pays, breaks, and gets fixed.
Not what vendors are selling.
Eleven years across payer, provider, PBM and digital health, advising CXOs in the US and India.
I started as a medical device software engineer at HCL, building the software clinicians hold in their hands. That is why I test market claims against how care is actually delivered and paid for, rather than against a vendor deck. At HFS Research I am practice leader for the Healthcare and Life Sciences practice.
Healthcare Pulse is where I do that work in public. One sharp read on India's digital health story, every Friday.
I am building toward independent director and board advisory work in healthcare, where domain depth, financial literacy and governance discipline have to sit in the same person.
Qualified the IICA Online Proficiency Self-Assessment Test for the Independent Director's Databank in August 2026 (Indian Institute of Corporate Affairs, under the Ministry of Corporate Affairs). Registration IDDB-NR-202607-084236.
An executive visual summary integrating the Social Determinants of Health with India's Digital Public Infrastructure. Six pillars where technology and people reinforce each other.
Read the visual summary →Twenty years of sitting tests, grouped by when. The failures stay on the list, because a list with only passes on it tells you nothing about anybody.
Seven sittings in roughly one year. The three that carried the most weight went badly.
Missed the postgraduate research route. Cleared the air force selection.
Four banking and insurance selections cleared. Two management entrance scores decent rather than exceptional.
Project delivery, then sustainability and climate risk. Both taken for the work rather than the certificate.
UGC NET cleared at 97.7 percentile, eligible for Assistant Professor. CSIR NET Mathematics at 89.2 percentile, short of the cut-off. The IICA proficiency test for the Independent Director databank, cleared.
Every red line on this page sent me somewhere else. The engineering entrances I missed are why I ended up writing software that clinicians hold in their hands, which is why I can tell when a health-tech claim does not survive contact with how care is actually delivered. I have never cleared an exam that taught me as much as the ones I did not.
The shape matters more than any single row. The early years are mostly misses and the recent ones mostly hits, not because the exams got easier, but because it took me a while to work out what I was actually good at.
India's digital health story, decoded for operators, investors and policy leaders. Free, always.