Dr. H. Sudarshan Ballal Exclusive | Healing 2.0: Where Innovation Meets Care | India Today
Thank you very much. Uh at the outset, I would like to congratulate India today for holding this wonderful conclave which is extremely extremely popular. I would also like to thank them for inviting me to be here. Without further ado, we go on to the topic for today which is healing 2.0 where innovation meets care. Actually, I thought no care is complete without compassion. So, I took the liberty of adding compassionate care instead of care alone. As I stand here, I reflect on my own journey. I’ve been a doctor now for 50 years. And in the good olden days when I was a young physician, nephrologist and intensivist, I used to sit by the bedside of critically ill patients to now with my new role, I guide thousands of young doctors in their journey as chairman of one of the largest healthcare networks in India. Over five decades, I have witnessed healthcare evolve very dramatically from weeks of stay in a hospital bed with a foot-long incision for an open gallbladder surgery with a dozen relatives in attendance to now an outpatient daycare or short persistent procedures with tiny incisions using a robot or a laparoscope. And unfortunately being a nuclear family you are left on your own in the hospital bed. And this is actually I’m quoting from my own experience about my grandmother. She was 70 uh almost maybe 50 years ago when she had to have gallbladder surgery and her son was the district medical officer. So he got some extra privileges in the government hospital. Got a suite, a private suite and there were a dozen relatives in the room and many many medical attenders too. But this is what she was left with. She came out happy obviously after 3 weeks of stay in the hospital and she had this massive scar which in the current day would be either like this two or three small keyholes or no holes that are visible at all. And this is again a representation of how it used to be the olden days. Elderly person getting operated and there will be multiple relatives by the bedside to comfort the patient. However, what you see now is one patient alone in the room and the only company they keep is the multiple monitors and the humming of the machines around them. Unfortunately, that is the truth these days. But through all this change, we should not forget the one truth that has remained constant. Patients do not come to us only for treatment, but with a hope that you will also heal them. An important message for all of us in healthcare is that amidst the mind-boggling advance in technology and use of AI in medicine, we should not we should ensure that medicine does not lose its human touch and empathy is as important as expertise in healing. With this in mind, I want to talk about what I call healing 2.0, O an era where innovation meets care, science meets compassion, and technology amplifies humanity. At its core, healing is not just about curing disease. It is about restoring dignity. It is about easing fear and it is about giving hope. And this, believe me, ladies and gentlemen, only a human doctor can. None of the modern robots or any of the scientific advances that we have can replace this. I being a nephologist I diialysis is very close to my heart. So I given you a representation of a diialysis machine here. One of the modern machines and healing 2.0 demands that innovations always meet human touch. This machine is worthless unless you have a caregiver who’s compassionate. A diialysis patient may not remember the model of the diialysis machine, but they will certainly never forget the doctor or the nurse who re reassured them during the long hours of treatment. If we innovate, which is necessary, but if we do it without compassion, people in my age group have been truly blessed to see the huge progress in the field of healthcare and others. As far as science is concerned, we have artificial intelligence, we have robots, we have robotic personal assistants. All this is a reality and believe me this is happening as I speak. And some of the innovations that come to my mind offand is tele medicine, remote monitoring, variable devices, robotics and precision medicine, artificial intelligence, genomics and personalized care, xenotransplantation, stem cells, tissue engineering and regenerative medicine, drone technology. I would like to say a couple of words about tele medicine. I’ve been practicing for decades now and we have been talking about tele medicine for decades ever since maybe I had finished my postgraduation. However, it got mired in the quagmire of legal and reg relative and uh regulatory issues that it never became a true reality and bang came co and believe it or not in one week teley medicine became a reality. So I must thank co for that one part at least if not anything else. Robotics as you’re all aware is precision medicine where once upon a time major surgery meant large scars, blood loss and prolonged recovery. Today robotic systems allow surgeons to operate through tiny incisions with unmatched precision and even remotely. We have been fortunate at Balipal to have had a robot for over 14 years and is predominantly used for cancer and urology service. Of course, yesterday I heard a very young boy Azu I think was uh interviewed here and he had a lot of things to say about artificial intelligence. I think I’ll cut a very sorry figure if I try to talk about artificial intelligence after what he said yesterday. This is one more area that Balipal is involved in. We have a company called stemputics and we do a lot of basic research and now have commercialized stem cells. Stem cells are plurotent cells that uh have an unlimited life. They never die. And interestingly, they can be trained to become any cell in the body. They can become a kidney, liver, heart, brain, whatever. So the art of stem cell therapy is to convert the stem cells in what you want it to be and regenerate organs. So combined with gene therapy, biologic device combination products, we have the whole field of regenerative medicine which I believe in the next few years maybe at least within the next decade will replace organ transplantation in many fields and of course we when we were young we had a cancer let’s say cancer of the breast, colon or uh uh lung and the treatment was the same irrespective you or who you were whether it was lung cancer, breast cancer or colon cancer. However, now we know the genetic signature of these cancers are different from the same kind of cancer and that is why many treatments for a particular type of cancer fail in some people have great results in others. So that is why now we know that one sizefits all was a wrong theory and we have to tailor the therapy just for you. very exciting field. All of you could probably go back and start a pig farm because soon organ transplantation may be replaced by xenotransplantation. Xenotransplantation is the process of transplanting organ from one species to another. As we speak, a trial has been uh announced in xenotransplantation and we had some very exciting news in the last one year where genetically modified pigs pig pigs where the genes were modified so that they don’t elicit an immune response were transplanted to human beings and as of today I think uh one of the recipients has had this pig kidney for more than 6 to9 months. So there are many more things that are happening. So also regenerative medicine about which I talked about will be another field that will replace many treatments we give like uh it may replace joints uh treat joints treat peripheral vascular disease so on and so forth. One of the things that has fascinated me is what everyone has. I think everyone in this audience has this a smartphone and an eye watch. I think these have been probably the greatest discoveries not probably not meant to be health caregivers in the past but have taken that role now with these eyewatch or any kind of a smartwatch uh and uh smartphone health rings and glucose monitoring devices. You can monitor almost all the all the vital signs remotely and it can be transmitted real time to your caregivers as is seen in this picture. I do not know how many in this audience would be diabetic but diabetes is a huge problem and in the good olden days you had to either your blood drawn to get the blood sugar check or be pricricked which is quite painful at your fingertips to get your sugar. Now you have a patch attached to your arm and that will measure your sugars round the clock. All these have made great differences and how we man monitor the health care of a given individual be it heart, blood pressure, diabetes and of course the pulse oximters during the covid time and this is a true story. Of course the picture is representative when covid struck all travel came to a knot. people could not move from their houses, kind of could not go to hospitals or so and for various reasons we at Manipal Hospital has a had a large patient brace from the northeast and they would come by train uh to see us and all that stopped suddenly because travel was not allowed and uh what happened at that time there was a patient from Asam who would normally come once in 6 months to see me mostly to say hello. So he had stable chronic kidney disease. Didn’t have much to we didn’t have much to do each for his each of his visits and he would spend a week traveling to Bangalore for a 30-minut consultation. During COVID he could not travel his daughter arranged a teleconultation with me from a chari cow shed speaking about his health and this is the representation of that. Literally this elderly man, this is of course a young man here was talking to me and I suddenly saw something with four legs move behind him and that was his cow and he was sitting on a charie outside the cow shed but we were able to talk to him because fortunately there was some reasonably good connection and we finished our teley consultation and he didn’t have to come to Bangalore. That was the power of tele medicine where care was delivered instantly across distance, circumstance and class. However, the story does not end there. That same patient once the COVID restrictions were removed even today chooses to travel all the way to Bangalore for a consultation despite tele medicine still being available. The question is why? I asked him why do you come all this way traveling for a week to see me for half an hour and what he told me was very interesting because he said he values the human touch the reassurance of a doctor sitting across the table the trust building a shared presence and the stethoscope on his chest so on and so forth is what he missed on the tele medicine consult and that is the essence of today’s topic healing 2.0 to technology can amplify care but it cannot certainly replace care. We must therefore ask what is the future of healing. I believe it lies in marrying technology with humanity and we do hope it’s a long-lasting marriage unlike some of the marriages that happen today do not last very long but this believe me should be a long-lasting marriage and this is in essence what it should be that is technology as you can see the various machines there with a prayer faith and the human touch a combination of this believe will heal almost everyone however sick they are. As we embrace the future, let us remember a robot can never wipe a tear. An algorithm cannot reassure a family. A machine cannot inspire hope. The healing touch, the look in the eye, the empathy in the voice will always remain irreplaceable. Healing 2.0 is about combining the two. Science that is precise, care that is personal. Let me end with a story that has stayed with me. A long-term patient once told me, “Doctor, you did not you did more than treat me. You healed me.” That ultimately is the aspiration of medicine. Not just adding years to life, but life to years. As India rises on the global stage, let our health care revolution be measured not by the machines we install or the profits we declare, but by the people we heal, the dignity we restore and the hope we spread. Because the future of medicine is not about technology replacing touch uh about technology replacing touch. It is about technology bringing us closer to the essence of touch. Thank you very much, Jin. [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] Thank you so much doctor and that was a very very informative presentation. uh most importantly how you give such a wonderful direction uh to health care meeting technology but having the humane touch and uh that certainly if uh every doctor follows that approach I think it’ll change the face of healthcare in India. I broadly want to pick up from the points that you’ve mentioned here uh to understand that medicine is now moving at lightning speed. Where do you see the most promising breakthroughs when it comes to digital health, precision medicine, regenerative therapies or even something else? You can take that mic. Thank you Sisha for having me here. Uh there are many things that have happened in the last many years and as I said we were blessed to witness the change. I think people of your age probably have not seen what it was 50 years ago. So everything would be something that you have seen all through. But we have seen I have traveled in cars that ran around gas to cars that ran in petrol and now cars that don’t need any petrol. So also healthcare has certainly come a long way. Just to mention a few of the changes that have happened. one I did mention you the story of uh uh tele medicine which has made a huge impact because we have a large number of patients coming from far off places and uh when I say far off places I’m sure our deputy CM will be the next speaker even in Bangalore coming from uh Kadakapara to Manipal hospital Bangalore I would consider it as long distance it takes two and a half hours so patients curse you because they have to come and wait for you so I think tele medicine has made an impact and it’s also very useful when you have a posttop patient who doesn’t have to come back repeatedly after the surgery. So many things that you do on a day-to-day basis except actual surgeries or procedures you can do with tele medicine. The second I think is what I mentioned is the uh remote monitoring and variable devices. You have now have devices like the eyewatch, iPhone, uh the uh ring health ring and the continuous glucose monitoring which has made life so easy. We used to have diabetics who go into hypoglycemia at midnight and morning when they wake up they have very high sugars and then you increase the insulin because what you have seen is high sugar. But by and large what they needed was actually decreasing the evening insulin. That is very easy for us to monitor with the continuous monitoring device because that will a graph of how the sugars were 24 hours in the day. The second thing is I had a very interesting uh actually uh true story of a lady I know very well who was about 70. She called me at 4 in the morning. Nowadays because of my age I don’t take up uh phone calls in the morning because she was a friend. I took the phone call. She said uh doctor I feel a little uneasy and my eyewatch is showing that my heart rate is fast and it’s irregular. So I rushed her to the hospital nearby which happened to be one of our hospitals. And lo and behold when she came to the hospital she had a condition called atrial fibrillation where the rhythm of the heart is lost and the atrium starts fibrillating instead of pumping and you or ventricles respond by extremely fast heart rates and then your cardiac output decreased. You feel dizzy and it was promptly treated and she went home the same evening and this could have been a disaster. She could have had a stroke. She could have lost her life. But the eyewatch literally saved her. So these kind of things we see it all the time. And when during COVID when the hospital was chocker block full, we had to send back very very sick patients. Uh we had to clean up the hospital beds. And then um home monitoring of vital signs including the pulse oxyter became a lifesaver because we didn’t have to admit people who are relatively stable. So all these things I think have made a huge difference in how we manage chronic diseases include uh including diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, lung disease, so on and so forth. Now we have the watches that monitor everything. My watch can monitor my oxygen, my heart rate and so many other things. And now there are watches that can also measure your blood pressure, so on and so forth. So you really don’t need any gimmicks or gadgets to do all this. Your eyewatch is good enough. The third as I said was robotic surgery. Huge difference it has made. uh it is easy for the surgeon and uh sometimes people mistake that the robot is operating and that’s where I said that uh doctors are still needed because the robot is guided by the doctor the doctor not be in the vicinity of the patient though usually conventionally they’re in the same theater but we did have an example uh of our uh surgeons in Delhi operating on a patient in uh Jaipur so it’s possible and actually transatlantic robotic surgery have happened from the US to some a country in Africa. So it’s possible technically it’s possible that the surgeon would guide the robot from long distance as long as you have uh good connections. Then of course uh we talked about xenotransplantation where genetically modified uh pigs can be uh organs can be harvested for uh uh organ transplantation. Then stem cell therapy so on and so forth though so the field is huge. So I feel medicine will be very different in the next 5 to 10 years from what it is today. Uh but you know the other aspect you mentioned of how healthcare often comes into scrutiny when it is commercialized. Now somebody like you who champions uh compassionate leadership. How do you reconcile business realities with the need to put patients first? uh I I would like to prefix my statement by saying compassionate care doesn’t necessarily mean free treatment because if your business draw the bad line yeah if your business model is unviable you cannot develop any cannot give any care uh compassionate care or otherwise so we have to have a business model and in my opinion this is where the government and uh the private sector should work together because India is a massive country population 1.4 4 billion no one sector can deliver care to everyone. So we have to have the government and the private sector work together and my uh mantra for a viable health care system is universal health insurance not necessarily coverage but universal health insurance for instance in the US without Medicare uh London UK without NHS no patient can come to the hospital it’s so expensive even the middle class super middle class will not afford treatment but of course those systems also have flaws so we should have a universal viable health insurance and the government and the private sector should work together especially in tertiary and quarterly care and the government probably should focus on public health preventive care primary care and secondary care because then you can actually prevent serious illness and you’ll save a lot more patients just to give you an example clean drinking water can save more children than all the hospital groups Manipal Apollo max put together in the country and that is the beauty of preventing you care uh you know India has incredible talent despite that we see a lot of doctors researchers moving abroad how is it that we can create a conducive environment here to be able to retain that talent uh that’s actually happening in a lighter vein I was settled in the US and they didn’t want me to leave the US but I came back uh that was almost 30 years ago but what I see today is there is reverse brain dane I think the hospitals at least I can speak for the healthcare Hospitals in India are on par are better than many of the hospitals abroad. In fact, I get many of my family to fly in from the US here to get healthcare. They can see the doctor of their choice. They can go to the hospital of their choice. They can get the treatment at 10% of the cost. And uh you know given the posity of time, I’m going to take this last question with you doctor. uh looking ahead what excites you the most about the future of Indian healthcare and which direction are we headed uh given the onset of AI and the way technology is booming uh you think doctors will still be relevant in the times to come 10 years from now or it’ll be robot robots doing the job no I I think healthcare is fortunately heading in the right direction as I see it in the last three decades of my coming back to India we have grown a lot and as I said we have grown very well of course uh technology has been uh adopted and adapted by most institutions and I think doctors who adopt technology will never perish but doctors who do not adopt technology will perish. Robots will always be our servants. We will never be the servants of a robot and I see great future for Indian healthcare. Dr. Balal, it’s been wonderful talking to you and uh most importantly seeing where healthcare is headed in the future. Thank you so much for joining us here today at uh this conclave. As I would also like to invite uh Dr. Arun Ed Kawaii Medical Center and Hospital to join us on stage and hand over a token of our appreciation. [Music]
At the India Today Conclave, Dr. H. Sudarshan Ballal, Chairman, Manipal Health Enterprises, introduced ‘Healing 2.0’, an era where medical innovation meets compassionate care. Drawing from five decades in medicine, he highlighted the dramatic evolution from invasive surgeries to high-tech robotic and remote procedures. While celebrating advancements like telemedicine, AI, regenerative medicine, and xenotransplantation, he argued that technology’s role is to amplify, not replace, the essential human connection in healing. He stressed that a patient values the reassurance of a doctor’s presence, something technology cannot replicate, quoting, “A robot can never wipe a tear, an algorithm cannot reassure a family, a machine cannot inspire hope.” The future of Indian healthcare, he concluded, lies in a long-lasting marriage between precise science and personal, empathetic care. #indiatodayconclave #healing2point0 #healthtech #aiinhealthcare #digitalhealth #futureofhealth #compassionatecare #roboticsurgery #telemedicine #medtech #xenotransplantation #stemcells #regenerativemedicine #humantouch #indianhealthcare #indiatodayconclavesouth
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