What's next in India

While we celebrate the conclusion of the Sweden-India Year of Health, we have already initiated the next stage of our close collaboration. The new decade will bring increased activity within both midwifery and elderly care, covering both ends of the spectrum where Swedish solutions are particularly sought after.

The importance of digital health will only increase, especially with regards to the management of chronic conditions, but here we hope to develop applications and medtech products with Indian innovators which can be applied in both markets in order to ease the enormous health care burden we face. The combination of longitudinal data from Sweden with volumes available in India could lead to significantly more efficient solutions. New agreements can also be expected within infectious diseases, in particular with regards to Anti-Microbial Resistance.

All this and much more was discussed during the State Visit to India last week. Swecare organised the Elderly Care tract with special focus on dementia, ripples of our dialogue with key opinion leaders can already be felt in the Indian health care community. Minister Harsh Vardhan and State Secretary Maja Fjaestad reasserted their commitment to the MoU which exists between our two countries. The Minister has already expressed his interest in visiting Sweden early next year.

MAMTA Founder and long-time Swecare partner Dr Mehra receiving the Royal Order of Seraphim & the Royal Order of Polar Star

2019: Planning for the Year Ahead

Sweden & India - Partners in Health

A commitment has now been made by both the Swedish Socialdepartementet and the Indian Ministry of Health and Family Welfare to make 2019 the Year of Health - #SwedenIndiaHealth2019. As we plan for the year ahead, we welcome your input as your engagement is crucial to this partnership. The focus will be on aligning Swedish Triple Helix life science actors in delivering a structured solution to common challenges in India. Concrete deliverables along the care continuum is the ultimate objective of this collaboration. Once this proof of concept yields results - increased efficiency, decreased costs, healthier community - the Indian government has expressed interest in scaling the concept to other parts of the country. The Indian Ministry suggests Jodhpur, and its new All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), as the test bed for this collaboration.

This, of course, does not preclude collaborations in other parts of India and many of our partners and members have ongoing projects throughout the country. We foresee increased activities with AIIMS New Delhi, Apollo Hospitals, Public Health Foundation of India, MaxCure Group, India Institute of Technology in Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Kolkata, and Chennai, to name a few. But these will all be conducted with a view to ensure that Swedish stakeholders, despite having distinct objectives, will be moving in the same direction. Partnerships between Swedish actors is encouraged so that the momentum we have generated results in concrete (measurable) outputs.

Proposed timeline for 10-year celebrations in 2019

• January - pre-feasibility study in Jodhpur to determine scope

• 24-28 February - Swedish Ministerial visit to Delhi (and Jodhpur) in conjunction with the Global Digital Health Partnership 

• April/May - heads of Indian hospitals will be invited to Sweden for a study visit and workshop

• 21-23 May - Vitalis 2019 session to focus on AI & Innovation with an incoming health tech delegation which will visit incubators and hubs in Stockholm and Gothenburg

• September - agency and private sector workshop in India

• October/November - Indian Ministerial or Health Secretary visit to Stockholm along with the 11th Joint Working Group meeting

Other dates to keep in mind

• 5 December - 2nd Private Sector Steering Committee Meeting

• 25-27 February - BioAsia 2019 in Hyderabad

• April/May - Indian elections

• 11-12 October - InnoHEALTH 2019 in New Delhi

• The Swedish India Business Council will also be organising tech delegations so please keep an eye on their website

Calls out

• Big data and Artificial Intelligence for monitoring health status and quality of life after the cancer treatment

• 9th Call - JPIAMR Call on Diagnostics and Surveillance 2019

• Affordable & Accessible Health Care through Early Screening and Efficient Management

Focus areas

• Digital Health - non-communicable diseases, elderly care, AI, Health Tech

• Anti-Microbial Resistance - infection control, knowledge transfer, nurse training, medtech

May I please request that if you have upcoming activities, you contact us so that we can provide the necessary support both in Sweden and in India? We will be coordinating closely with the Indian Embassy in Stockholm and the Swedish Embassy in New Delhi and one of the proposed ideas is to create a quarterly newsletter highlighting events within the life science sector between our two countries which could also act as a status report so do write to us!