Technology can never replace humans in healthcare: Dr. K Hari Prasad

Apollo Hospital’s association with North East continues for the last 40 years

Technology is never going to replace human requirements at least in healthcare, stressed, Dr K Hari Prasad, President, Hospitals Division, Apollo Hospitals Enterprise Limited. The people behind the machine are always required and going to remain always and the only thing that they would need to do is to embrace technology and need to know how to use the technology, he pointed out.

Dr. Hari Prasad was delivering a talk in virtual mode on the second day of the IndiGlobal Bharat Summit that was held at IIT Guwahati, Assam recently.

“Be prepared to embrace technology. Don’t be scared of technology. Learn the skills of newer technologies and be prepared for change. Technology is only going to enhance the skills of the hands behind the machines and technology is only going to make it safer and improve patient safety and outcomes,” he added.

Dr. Hari Prasad highlighted the importance of preventive health care. Almost 80 percent of the deaths are occurring due to non-communicable diseases like cancers, heart attacks, strokes, accidents, etc. and all these are preventable or at least controllable. So it is very important that we all pay attention to the preventable aspect of healthcare. He also advised coverage under Health Insurance. Whatever may be the scheme, one need to have enough coverage to take care of himself and his family’s medical needs and emergencies.

“In the initial days of my career, most of the nurses used to come from Kerala. But now we see North East is providing a big number of healthcare workers to the entire country. One of the advantages is the ability to speak good English. Skill development is a very important aspect for Northeast and I think the government of India is giving a lot of importance to it,” he stated.

Commenting about Apollo’s plans for North East, Dr. Hari Prasad said that the bonding between Apollo hospitals and the North East has been very strong over the last 40 years. Around 25 to 30 percent of patients coming to our Apollo Hospital, Chennai hail from the East and North East parts of our country, he said.

Now we have two hospitals in Guwahati both of which are extremely good Tertiary Care Centers. We are gradually moving closer and closer to the people of the North East and we hope to go further up into the Northeast once things settle down and you have to get the right opportunity, Dr. Hari Prasad explained.