Frugal Innovations – Making Health Care Accessible, Affordable and Reliable

Abstract

As an exponentially growing population with an increasing life expectancy strains the medical care system worldwide, healthcare emerges as a major area of innovation. This is most prominent in emerging markets like India, where the cost of healthcare is as important a factor as the quality of the product or service being provided. India ranks the lowest globally in terms of percentage of GDP spent on healthcare—only 4% of its economy. India also lacks enough trained doctors to serve its population of 1.2 billion. Low-cost medical devices have enormous potential to reduce the gap between the developed and developing worlds, and to reach the ‘last mile’ of people in the most innovative ways.