ALL PERSPECTIVES
Every issue of Healthcare Pulse
Sharp, contrarian reads on India's digital health story and global healthcare. Search or filter by topic and year.
Edition 62: Profit or Patient Care? That's the Wrong Question
Margins and patient care pull against each other, but it’s a design problem boards can fix, not an ethics problem they can only...
Edition 61: The 100 Crore Illusion
India built the world’s largest digital health ID system in record time. The one number that proves it actually works has quiet...
Edition 60: What India's newest National Family Health Survey really tells us — and why the next decade of health will look nothing like the last
For forty years, India fought one battle: keep mothers and babies alive, and get people into the health system. The sixth Natio...
Edition 59: What India's DPDPA actually changes for healthcare
The Act, in force since November 2025, flipped the asymmetry between provider and patient. The “file” the hospital owned for 50...
Edition 58: Ebola is back — why India should pay attention
A 2026 Bundibugyo Ebola outbreak is unfolding. India has zero cases and low direct risk. But the real story is diagnostics, pre...
Edition 57: The 1% Problem Every Indian Pharma CEO Is Ignoring
India’s pharma market grew 8.1% last year. Only 1.5% came from real demand. Why the other 6.6% is a slow-moving crisis, and how...
Edition 56: The Orchestration Gap — Why Mid-Tier Indian Hospitals Are Losing
International patients are knocking. Mid-tier hospitals aren’t converting. What Tier-1 chains figured out about medical tourism...
Edition 55: India's biggest healthcare bet isn't a hospital
While headlines obsess over new AIIMS and hospital IPOs, India is rebuilding healthcare from the bottom up. The pyramid, eight ...
Edition 54: The Four Indias of Healthcare
Why “pan-India” is usually a lie. India’s healthcare market isn’t one market, it’s four, each with different economics, payers,...
Edition 53: India just cracked the code on 400 years of energy independence
India’s Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor achieved first criticality. Why it makes India the only democracy running commercial fas...
Edition 52: India has built the world's largest preventive health system. Now it must prove it works.
India built the world’s largest preventive health infrastructure: 1.8 lakh AAMs, 834M ABHA IDs, Tele-MANAS at scale. The execut...
Edition 51: Autism is a system design failure India can no longer ignore
Families don’t struggle because care doesn’t exist. They struggle because nothing connects. Why India’s autism crisis is a desi...
Edition 50: India's GLP-1 Inflection Point
Semaglutide went generic and prices collapsed to ~Rs1,290/month. India’s GLP-1 market moved from premium to mass-market in one ...
Edition 49: War is quietly rewriting the rules of healthcare
The real disruption isn’t AI, it’s conflict. War breaks the three assumptions healthcare was built on, and is shifting care fro...
Edition 48: The Middle East conflict and Indian healthcare
How the Middle East conflict hits Indian healthcare indirectly: energy shocks, costlier hospital operations, device supply disr...
Edition 47: India's Obesity Crisis
NFHS-5 shows ~24% of Indian adults are overweight or obese, and rising. Why obesity is becoming a national economic challenge, ...
Edition 46: India Is Ready for AI in Healthcare. But Only in Parts.
India has the digital rails and policy momentum (ABDM, SAHI, BODH) to scale healthcare AI. But data quality, regulation depth a...
Edition 45: India just institutionalized Healthcare AI
At the India AI Impact Summit 2026, the government launched SAHI (AI strategy) and BODH (a privacy-preserving benchmarking plat...
Edition 44: India Budget 2026: Healthcare Bets on Innovation, But Execution Will Decide
Union Budget 2026 crosses Rs1 lakh crore for healthcare and treats it as an economic growth engine, biopharma, workforce, menta...
Edition 43: EU–India FTA & Healthcare: What It Means
India and the EU concluded their largest-ever FTA in January 2026, removing tariffs on 90%+ of goods. For healthcare it’s a lon...
Edition 42: India's diagnostics boom: the next scalable Healthcare Platform Play
India’s diagnostics market is moving from lab business to platform business, doubling by the early 2030s, consolidating into na...
Edition 41: India's Hospitals Are Not Ready for NHCX and DPDP
India built the digital health rails (ABDM, NHCX, DPDP) but only ~1-2% of hospitals are onboarded to NHCX. Hospital readiness, ...
Edition 40: India's First Government AI Clinic Is Live
GIMS Greater Noida launched India’s first government hospital-based AI clinic in Jan 2026, moving AI from pilots to frontline p...
Edition 39: 2025 Year in Review: learnings and forecasts
Closing 38 editions of 2025: five foundational truths, execution trumps funding, digital needs embedding, the future is hybrid,...
Edition 38: 800 Million Health IDs; And People Still Ask 'What Is ABHA?'
India created ~80 crore ABHA IDs but a Maharashtra study found only 4% ever used ABHA services. The gap isn’t infrastructure, i...
Edition 37: India's National Health Claims Exchange (NHCX)
NHCX is India’s UPI moment for health claims: a national FHIR-based protocol that cuts claim cost from ~Rs500 to <Rs15, enfo...
Edition 36: India's antibiotic resistance crisis is a ticking time bomb
India is now a primary contributor to global AMR: 83% of patients carry multidrug-resistant organisms, 58,000 newborns die year...
Edition 35: India's Rural–Urban Healthcare Gap
65% of Indians are rural but 70-75% of healthcare infrastructure is urban. Only 3% of specialists practice rurally. The gap is ...
Edition 34: Why a country that meets WHO's doctor benchmark still struggles
India’s 1:811 doctor ratio beats WHO’s benchmark, but public hospitals face 1:11,000. The crisis is maldistribution, not shorta...
Edition 33: Generic Medicines at Scale: Jan Aushadhi's 16,900+ stores
Medicines are ~two-thirds of Indian families’ health spend. Jan Aushadhi’s 16,900+ stores sell generics 50-90% cheaper, and the...
Edition 32: From Zero to 18,900: The Organ Story No One Signed Up For
India hit ~18,900 organ transplants in 2024, #3 globally, but donation is still under 1 per million. Policy reform and a digita...
Edition 31: India's IVF Boom: Technology and Lifestyle Redefining Parenthood
India’s fertility market is a $1.6bn enterprise growing 15-18% yearly, with 3.3 lakh IVF cycles set to double by 2030. PE money...
Edition 30: Health insurance is growing, but real financial protection is not
OOPE fell to 39.4% but Indians still pay ~half of health costs out-of-pocket. Insurance growth misses the mark because it ignor...
Edition 29: CGHS 2025: A long-awaited overhaul
CGHS’s first overhaul in 15 years: revised rates for ~2,000 procedures, a new C-DAC digital HMIS, PAN-based IDs, and inclusion ...
Edition 28: Rewiring India's C-section economy
India’s C-section rate doubled from 1-in-10 to 1-in-5 (over 1-in-2 in Telangana). Overuse harms mothers and drains budgets. Fiv...
Edition 27: DPDP Act 2023: Turn compliance into competitive advantage
India’s first comprehensive data protection law carries penalties up to Rs250 crore. For hospitals, payers and enterprises it m...
Edition 26: India's Mental Health Crisis: The Silent Epidemic
197 million Indians (1 in 7) live with a mental health condition, yet only ~1% of the health budget goes to it. Tele-MANAS and ...
Edition 25: From Infections to Chronic Care: India's Inflection Point
India’s disease burden has pivoted from infections to chronic and mental health conditions, the West’s transition in fast-forwa...
Edition 24: India's Pharma Paradox: Big Market, Bigger Gaps
India supplies 20% of global generics and 60% of vaccines, yet imports 65-70% of APIs from China, spends only 6-8% on R&D, ...
Edition 23: Autism 2025: Rising prevalence, real impact, enterprise role
Autism prevalence is up 300% since 2000; ~18 million Indians are on the spectrum. With costs nearing $1 trillion and neurodiver...
Edition 22: Stop Squeezing. Start Rebalancing
Healthcare is a balloon: squeeze cost and outcomes bulge out; chase outcomes and costs explode. The fix isn’t squeezing harder,...
Edition 21: Lead with the local: India proves healthcare is hyperlocal
India’s winning health model is national rails + state playbooks + trusted village relationships. With 1M+ ASHAs, 344M eSanjeev...
Edition 20: India's phygital healthcare is scaling: tap eSanjeevani
140 million consultations in, eSanjeevani is the foundation of India’s hybrid ‘phygital’ care model, and a sleeping giant of mo...
Edition 19: Monetize India's RMNCAH+N Continuum of Care
RMNCAH+N is a lifecycle business, not a one-off sale. From fertility to adolescence to nutrition, enterprises that build for co...
Edition 18: Map, Engage, and Invest in India's Healthcare Funding Landscape
India’s health system is a puzzle of public (MoHFW, Defence, Railways) and private funding. Before investing, map the money flo...
Edition 17: India's Public Health Journey: A 20-Year Sprint
Since 2005 India built platforms for Universal Health Coverage, but deep state and rural-urban inequities endure (IMR ranges 3-...
Edition 16: Take Action on Ayushman Bharat
Ayushman Bharat is the world’s largest government health assurance scheme: 55 crore covered, Rs5 lakh per family, 1.6 lakh upgr...
Edition 15: Act Now: Stop Funding Sickness and Invest in Prevention
Returns in healthcare come from social determinants, not reorganizing boards. Sri Lanka, Brazil, Costa Rica and Cuba show upstr...
Edition 14: National Health Policy 2017 – Still Setting the Agenda in 2025
India’s NHP 2017 still guides budgets and Ayushman Bharat. Five enterprise takeaways: digital health infrastructure, PPPs, work...
Edition 13: Who's Paying for Healthcare in the Future?
The US coverage model is being rewritten: self-insured employers rise (117M to 122M), group insurance declines, ACA marketplace...
Edition 12: Generational shifts demand a rethink in health-benefits strategy
By 2033 millennials and Gen Z will be 73%+ of the workforce, digital-first, prevention-focused, wellness-driven. The shift from...
Edition 11: Data retention poses a lurking threat in healthcare
Healthcare stores data for 7-30 years but 90%+ is never reused, inflating cost and breach risk. GDPR and DPDP say store only as...
Edition 10: The CIO Agenda Reset: From IT Fixers to Growth Drivers
Health plan CIOs face declining enrollment and shrinking reimbursements. The reset: stop fixing IT, become a growth architect, ...
Edition 9: Navigating India's Medical Tourism Revolution
India’s medical tourism is set to leap from $6bn to $35bn by 2027 (20%+ CAGR), with 700,000+ arrivals in 2024. Four pillars, af...
Edition 8: Four is Greater Than Three: Why Health Equity Completes the Puzzle
The Triple Aim is wobbling, costs soar, experience stagnates, US life expectancy fell to 1996 levels, because it forgot equity....
Edition 7: Embrace Technology to Address the Healthcare Delivery Crisis
By 2035 the US faces an 80,000+ physician shortage as chronic disease and aging surge. AI, wearables and smart-home tech enable...
Edition 6: New Tariffs Threaten US Health Systems While Health Plans Skate By
US healthcare costs rose 146% in 25 years while incomes rose <15%. New tariffs hit break-even hospitals hard while lean heal...
Edition 5: India Must Learn from US Healthcare Failures, Not Repeat Them
Value-Based Care largely failed in the US ($15,000+ per person, up to 20% revenue in compliance). India can’t absorb it. Health...
Edition 4: Tariff Shock: Why India must build healthcare resilience now
A 26% US tariff on Indian medical devices is a stress test, not just a trade spat. It threatens diagnostics costs, rural hospit...
Edition 3: Harness IoT to revolutionize autism care
Autism is up 317% since 2000 (1 in 36 US children), with societal cost nearing $461bn by 2025. IoT, wearables, smart homes, rem...
Edition 2: Tackling physician burnout requires reimagining healthcare
48.2% of physicians reported burnout in 2023. It’s not a wellness problem, it’s a systemic signal of inefficiency. Treat it as ...
Edition 1: Private equity can transform India's healthcare, if done right
Post-COVID PE surged to $5-6bn/year, Blackstone, Temasek, KKR buying hospital chains. PE can transform Indian healthcare, but o...