Generic selectors
    Exact matches only
    Search in title
    Search in content
    Post Type Selectors
    Filter by Categories
    news
    UHC
    WFC

In Conversation:- Ajay Bakshi, Neurosurgeon, Neuroscientist, McKinsey consultant and ex-CEO of Max Healthcare, Manipal Hospitals and India Operations of IHH/Parkway Hospitals

Apr 14, 2022

Dr. Ajay Bakshi is a neurosurgeon, neuroscientist, McKinsey consultant and ex-CEO of Max Healthcare, Manipal Hospitals and India Operations of IHH/Parkway Hospitals. He has recently co-founded BuddhiMed Technologies which is an AI based health technology company that is working to merge modern medicine with computer science to benefit doctors, patients, well individuals and other members of the healthcare ecosystem. He is also a volunteer at iSPIRT – a Bangalore based technology think tank. Dr. Bakshi trained as a neurosurgeon at AIIMS, New Delhi from where he completed his MBBS and M.Ch. (Neurosurgery) in 1997. He then worked as a clinical neurosurgeon at a not-for-profit institution in New Delhi for four years. Thereafter he moved to the Department of Neurobiology at Drexel University to set up his stem cell transplantation lab. From both these stints, Dr Bakshi published 8 peer reviewed scientific papers including those in Journal of Neurosurgery, Journal of Neurotrauma, Brain Research and Cell Transplant. At this time, Dr. Bakshi also completed his Wharton Management Program from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
I have spent nearly 4 decades in healthcare as a neurosurgeon, a scientist, strategy consultant, CEO of hospital networks and most recently as a HealthTech entrepreneur. Throughout this journey – I have been thinking about and working on how technology might be used to improve healthcare experiences and outcomes at population scale. We published one of the first white papers on mHealth in collaboration with GSMA back in 2010 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MHealth#cite_note-10). Over the last few years – I have been building technologies to bring advanced AI to the fingertips of doctors and patients in collaboration with my colleagues at NeuranceAI.
As a volunteer at iSPIRT I have been fortunate to participate in the shaping of HealthStack – which is a complete re-imagination of how India’s national health system can be designed to empower citizens to use their data for better healthcare. With the roll out of ABDM and general post-covid consensus that Indian health systems need to be strengthened using technology – we may have a window of opportunity to accelerate the adoption of solutions that can improve healthcare dramatically.
Healthcare is a complex topic that deals with critical elements of citizens’ lives – and great care has to be taken to ensure that citizens’ interests are served first. Alignment of incentives amongst different stakeholders and ensuring that solutions can scale across a diverse spectrum of socio-economic and technological status of the users.
The Lancet’s Commission is taking a multi-disciplinary approach to reimagine healthcare for India and I hope that the recommendations coming out from this important piece of research inspire policymakers, healthcare stakeholders and citizens to participate in building a newer and stronger health system for India.