INTEGRATED HEALTH CARE, TECH WILL DISRUPT SECTOR

While clinical research will get a boost, having a skilled workforce and public spending on health care will be challenges in the near term

- VIREN SHETTY

Scene: Narayana Health 2021 Annual Strategy Session: Getting Back to Business.

“What if this pandemic never goes away?” I ask a computer screen dotted with pixels somewhat resembling managers and doctors from across our network of hospitals. No response. Nine months into this pandemic and our videoconferencing skills were abortive at best.

“What if the world never goes back to normal, and this is what our future looks like?” I could sense the mood in the room shift a little, but still no response. I check the audio settings and curse the UX choices of the developers behind our videoconferencing app.

“How will our business thrive in a world permanently scarred by Covid-19?” I ask as loud as is possible in a professional setting.

A long silence and then someone helpfully chimes in, “Sir, we’re not able to follow you clearly.” Such a great example of failure to communicate strategic intent. Or maybe just audio issues.

The session did not go the way I had hoped it would. Everyone I spoke with maintained that the pandemic was almost over, and that business will get back to normal. I found this hard to believe. This rogue strand of RNA had already humbled the smartest people to ever face a television camera and brought the world economy to its knees. If there is a simple narrative, it would be that the coronavirus controls the world, and we need to do its bidding. The more nuanced narrative is that we will never wake up to a pre-Covid world, and we need to adapt our business to succeed in a new world order dominated by uncertainty. I was hoping we would come up with a better solution than copy-pasting the 2019 business plan for 2021 and hoping for the best.