‘The Indian Government needs to implement favourable policies that enhance innovation and drive collaborations’

It is said that the wealth of a nation depends on the health of its citizens. But ironically, the healthcare and pharmaceutical sectors in India have not been given the level of importance it deserves by the government.

The result is: Healthcare in India is plagued with several challenges that need immediate attention. The most critical aspect among these is ensuring quality, affordability and accessibility of medicines and treatment to the patients at all times.

Despite improvements in the recent past, the healthcare sector continues to suffer because of poor policy implementation and underfunding. The government will need to play a key role to drive India’s healthcare.

The first step to achieving the 3 A’s of healthcare (affordability, availability and access) is to increase the healthcare funding and reform the healthcare system for the optimum utilisation of resources.

India faces a major challenge in providing access to medicines for its 1.2 billion plus people. While the government has addressed the pricing issue through the new pricing policy, the accessibility and quality aspects, especially for lower income groups in the country remains largely unanswered.

The solution to addressing the issue of affordability and accessibility lies in innovation coupled with collaboration between the government, industry, academia NGOs and other stakeholders.

As India unfortunately leads the world in terms of share of disease burden, innovation leading to new drugs is critical if we are to address unmet medical need in the country. Existing drugs will continue to be important in meeting the growing demand for healthcare, particularly with the increasing use of generic medication. At the same time, advances in disease understanding and the application of new technologies will be required to ensure the delivery of new medicines.

The Indian Government needs to implement favourable policies that enhance innovation and drive collaborations, besides addressing issues in critical building blocks like talent and infrastructure. The Government’s support for innovation R&D is required in the form of tax incentives, regulations and grants for various research projects in the sector.

The Government should work to make India the hub for discovery research and development, which can usher the same change that software brought to the country in the late 1990s and early 2000. This has the potential to create thousands of new jobs while discovering new cures for various diseases.

The Government needs to treat discovery R&D separately and incentivise organisations that are making progress in this area, as investment for taking a single molecule to market runs into millions of dollars; not to mention the high chances of failures.

The public-private partnership (PPP) model is the best way to harness India’s innovation capability and the Government should take steps to promote PPP in innovative research projects.

The Government also needs to strengthen and increase capital outlay for academic institutions engaged in scientific research. R&D awards for scientific innovation would also be a major boost.

Contract manufacturing which is a key growth driver for the pharma industry should receive tax benefits by way of profit- linked incentives. Clearly, the time is now. India has the potential to graduate from a cost-competitive destination to a land of innovation. Government intervention and support will play a huge role in making this aspiration a reality. 

Pharma companies, Government and other stakeholders must understand that innovation calls for prolonged gestation periods and a long-term vision. At Glenmark, we strongly believe in innovation and have continued to invest aggressively in drug discovery research over the last 14 years. While Indian companies like Glenmark are making headway in innovation, but it is still a long way off to benchmark or set a global level. High capital investment is always a hindrance. This is where the Government needs to step in and provide significant incentive for innovative R&D and boost the efforts of research based pharma companies.

As pharma and healthcare are critical sectors and involves long gestation and capital intensive ventures, a long standing demand has been to accord ‘priority status’ to them just like infrastructure. This will act as a catalyst for not only attracting funds, but will also provide gainful employment to millions of Indians. We hope that the new Government fulfills this aspiration of including pharma and healthcare in priority sectors.

– Glenn Saldanha, Chairman & Managing Director Glenmark Pharmaceuticals