Govt considering to set up Innovation Health Fund: Home Secy

With the need to making health care affordable and accessible to all, Union Health Secretary Lov Verma today said the Government is considering to set up an 'Innovation Health Fund' under the national health policy.
"New systems will be put in place in the National Health Policy and the Government may even consider setting up an Innovation Health Fund," he said at 'FICCI Heal 2014' function here.
Verma also urged the industry to compile best practices and innovations of the industry and submit it to the Ministry for consideration.
Speaking on various innovations in the health sector, he said that the colour coded linen in hospitals is a simple method of differentiating various linen, hence reducing the risk of cross-infection.

The coding should be followed by hospitals right up to district level health care centres, he suggested.
"Ayush is another initiative of the Government which has the potential but has not been utilised to its full capacity till now. There is great scope for popularising alternative medicine and mainstreaming it with general medicine," he said.

The Secretary also dwelt on the importance of Electronic Health Records (EHRs) and appreciated FICCI for supporting the government in this initiative.
Dr Poonam Khetrapal Singh, Regional Director-SEARO, World Health Organisation (WHO), emphasised the need for innovation to make health care affordable and accessible to all.

"There is the need for innovations in developing new drugs, vaccines and diagnostics. Then there is the 'Health Systems' innovation need such as the use of technologies such as mobile phones by health workers for patient referrals, event reporting and disease surveillance.
"Similarly, further innovation is needed in tele-health for tele-consultations and their scale up is quite clear. And finally there is need for 'Household' level innovations that should bring better health to people by themselves and their community efforts but supported by innovative approaches that are sustainable," she said.
Speaking on the occasion, Dr A Didar Singh, Secretary General, FICCI said, "We propose to create a virtual pooling of industry CSR funds by creating IISH (Indian Industry in Solidarity for Health) Kosh to channelise funds into priority area in health care identified by the government.