Machine-managed medicare

According to the index of objects launched into outer space, maintained by the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs, there were 4,987 satellites orbiting planet Earth at the start of this year. More than 16,000 previously launched objects are learnt to have decayed into Earth’s atmosphere. While these numbers, awesome as they are, may or may not make lay people appreciate the enormous effort that has been made in the field of space exploration over years by teams in different countries, including India, reaching the point of making complex machines land on the surface of Mars and communicate data leading to deeper understanding of the answer to the question of whether human beings can colonise other planets. The knowledge and machines emerging out of the space exploration programmes, according to knowledgeable sources, have benefited the field of medicare to an extent that medicare has come to be heavily dependent on machines in use nowadays for both diagnosis of the cause of a multitude of ailments bugging people and also the most appropriate line of treatment. Nearly 6,000 devices are said to be in use nowadays by medical practitioners in India’s super-speciality hospitals. Even time-honoured methods and means of measuring body temperature and blood pressure have witnessed emergence of their far better versions.

People at large form opinion on both doctors and hospitals based on many factors including the factor of getting well as a result of treatment by the former and the factor of efficiency of the staff of the latter, not to forget the costs involved. Two other factors that may not count in the matter of judging the merit of the above-mentioned factors are the resources spent on training a doctor and on equipping the hospital with state-of-the-art devices which cost a bomb.

The multitude of issues relating to the healthcare sector of the country are being raised on many platforms. Although this year’s budgetary allocation for health spending by the Government of India is a rise of 15.9 per cent over last year’s budget, the air is abuzz with the verdict that the allocated money is not enough to make Bharat ‘Ayushman.’ Funds needed for the country’s defence forces to be tip-top and also for meeting the steadily rising oil import bill are gobbling the resources at the command of the Government. In that backdrop, the exercise of allocating public funds for many other sectors of the economy, including healthcare of 135 crore population amounts to tight-rope walking. One of the measures just announced by the Ministry of Health, namely regulation relating to medical devices, particularly monetary compensation to patients suffering due to faulty devices sold by companies, is most timely. The cost of medicare inevitable for many life-threatening illnesses being prohibitive, although facilities and services of world class are currently available in India to treat them appropriately, scope for treating other ailments without having to marshal high-cost devices merits to be considered by the medical profession.