Mr. Khedkar shares key insights on trends that have the potential to disrupt the healthcare industry.

A recognized healthcare industry expert, Pratap Khedkar’s thought leadership work currently focuses on topics including biopharmaceutical companies’ new commercial and organizational models; healthcare policy; and the evolving relationships between patients, providers and payers, and the life sciences organizations that serve them. His insights have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg Businessweek, NPR, Business Insider, Fortune, Medical Marketing & Media, Pharmaceutical Executive and other media outlets.

Pratap was elected CEO of ZS Associates in July 2021. Prior to this, he led the firm’s global pharmaceuticals practice for nine years, as well as a practice focused on the dynamics of healthcare ecosystems. He founded and led its advanced data science capability track, which focuses on AI. He has also served on ZS’s board since 2012. He has advised many biopharmaceutical companies on a wide range of business issues including commercial strategy, customer-centric marketing, market access, sales compensation and advanced analytics.

In an exclusive interaction, Mr. Khedkar shares key insights on trends that have the potential to disrupt the healthcare industry. Here are some key excerpts.

Major market forces are dramatically altering the landscape of the healthcare business, which has traditionally been systematic and deliberate in its response to change. Out of the four broad trends, like the rise of the consumer, the rise of the institution, the rise of digitization and the rise of biology, in India, there’s been a focus on the first and the third specifically. Technology has had the greatest impact on changing industries and behavior all around the world. Technology has sparked development and innovation in the healthcare industry. By 2024, the Healthcare IT Market is estimated to be worth $390.7 billion, expanding at a faster rate than most countries' GDP. Each year, processing 30 billion healthcare transactions costs over $250 billion. [1]

Disruptive technologies and processes are beginning to profoundly alter how medications and health systems serve patients, but the question is whether the industry is prepared. The healthcare industry is also seeing signs of disruption within the industry itself. Over the next five years, up to 80% of providers throughout the world aim to invest in digital health, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning, as well as tools to support clinical staff and caregivers.

According to Mr. Khedkar, with regards to India, the twist lies in the huge amount of investment in frugal innovation which implies innovation is not about cutting-edge technology but the ability of the product/service solving about 90% of the problem with 20% of the cost and providing greater accessibility to the target group. However, keeping the cost aspect aside, the more important aspects are portability, power and training that have the potential to solve the problem. While the start-up scenario in India is reinventing healthcare in the process, Indian start-ups need to come up with more India relevant approaches to solving the problem. Having said that, innovation alone isn’t enough. It is also crucial for the product/service to be scalable.

Pratap Khedkar, CEO, ZS, said, “This is where ZS comes in, willing to invest and scale the same. Indian start-ups need enough players who’re interested in the other side of the innovation, i.e., the scaling part. In this regard, ZS has introduced the idea of ‘intrapreneurship’ where the organization has created protected start-ups within the large service company. ZS incubates these startup ventures dedicated to innovation within the company. At the moment there are 4 to 5 of these ventures being nurtured within the company with the help of AI. These ventures are focusing on healthcare aspects like bio-medical research and real-world implementation of AI. One of these projects is very focused on creating AI products. In addition, ZS has also turned some of these intrapreneurship ventures into product-based companies along with peak domain expertise in healthcare. ZS is one of the few companies that is successful in offering both product and service under the same umbrella. The organization has taken a very interesting and innovative approach in this aspect.”

The workforce acquired for coming up with the innovative products are allocated to agile teams where they’re given the opportunity to experiment. These teams are not held to achieve revenue goals and are given the freedom to operate in a high-risk environment and later are evaluated on how many creative ideas they’ve tried and how many times they’ve failed before they succeed. These teams are evaluated on learning ability and agility rather than traditional business goals. ZS has created the start-up culture in small protected op-eds where the organization backs up the incubation project for up to 5 years and absorbs the downside risks as ZS has the infrastructure to fund the same.

The challenge for health-care players is to detect and capitalize on disruptive innovations for the benefit of patients and the global community, while also offering a more efficient and effective health-care system for the twenty-first century and beyond. While such changes have the potential to provide significant benefits to society, such as improved health, social development, and economic growth, health systems and their participants must be prepared to foresee, consider, and accept such changes.