'Technology can bridge shortage of human resource in heathcare'

Shortage of teachers, doctors and nurses could be overcome with the use of technology

Drawing attention to the huge dearth of healthcare human resource in India, including doctors and nurses, Apollo Hospitals Group Chairman Prathap C. Reddy said technology should be used to overcome the shortage of teachers in medical colleges.

Reddy stressed on exponentially increasing the number of doctors, nurses and paramedics in India and highlighted the advantage of technology to overcome the hurdle.

"The most difficult commodity in India is the health human resource...we are short of doctors, we need to double our doctors.

"We are short of nurses. We need to triple our nurses from 0.8 million to 2.5 million...we are tremendously short of paramedics...we have 2.5 million paramedics. We need to take it to 10 million," Reddy said Wednesday evening during the 10th anniversary celebrations of the Apollo Gleneagles Hospitals here.

Reddy explained that bridging the gap would create employment opportunities. However, setting up new medical colleges to train doctors and other staff members is difficult owing to the guidelines governing this.

"You know if we do all these, it's going to create tremendous employment potential, but unfortunately the guidelines are so difficult. Fortunately, now new medical colleges have come and hopefully more will come up, " he said, adding the hospital here would soon become a 1,000-bedded one.

Technology, he reckoned, could be harnessed to train potential healthcare workers and that would counters the problem of inadequate teachers.

"But they don't have teachers. So this is where we are saying use technology...why do you always need physical teachers? You can use technology and that can probably fulfill shortage of teachers," Reddy contended.