Will you Be the Next Medical Entrepreneur?

When i opted biology in high school instead of mathematics, people around me warned me about the challenges i will be facing, that i may not get admission in a medical college and my career will be in oblivion then; even if i get into medicine, it’s going to be a real tough, arduous and long journey. But the thirst to gain knowledge of a human, the finest creation by God and a will to relieve people from their pains and sufferings, ensured that i entered this noble profession.Being a medicine student, you have to have a focused approach towards studies and the training. With around 19 subjects to remember by heart, there is little, if any, scope of taking it lightly or doing any mistake, because it’s a question of human lives after all.

While going through this journey, a doctor is finally born. But somewhere, a person is lost. A creative, innovative, innocence mind is replaced by a tough, trained mind all set to serve people. But sometimes it’s felt that it’s not the ONLY approach to serve people. It is well known that “Prevention is better than cure” and only theoretical knowledge of medicine can’t treat every aspects of illness. So, a doctor has to be humble, dynamic and innovative in his approach towards patients. But how can a doctor be dynamic and innovative when he has limited resources to apply in clinics?

The answer lies here, “to be an entrepreneurial doctor”. An entrepreneur is all about identifying a problem, generating an idea to solve it, and implementing it professionally. Every doctor might feel at some time or the other, that there is a problem which he/she faces related to, or unrelated to his/her profession. It’s time we start generating ideas, create professional models and launch them.

There are examples of physicians and surgeons, who have created products, in parallel to their clinical practice. Dr. Rohit Singal, MD(Radiodiagnosis), founder of Sourcebits, is perhaps the best example. Although Dr. Singal is someone who went in a completely different direction, examples such as Dr. Shyam V Rao, Forus Health and Dr. P Sreenivasan, Chairman and MD of Jeevan Blood Bank and Research Centre, are successful entrepreneurs in the Healthcare space. And it’s not limited to practising doctors, even medical students can identify the holes in healthcare or even in other sectors too, where they can contribute by creating a business model, solve a problem and earn some money!!

It has been estimated that the Healthcare sector in India will be valued at USD 140 billion by 2017. In other words, there are a lot of problems to be identified and solved, and it can’t be better than doctors solving these themselves while generating revenues at the same time. This way, the doctors too will get opportunities to modify the service they are going to provide to people.

It seems that doctors need to team up with like minded people and enter into entrepreneurial world and change the way community gets its health services, and finally, change the world!

- Dr. Navdeep Ahuja