Exporting LSH

Our CEO, Anant Kumar, recently came back from speaking at the World Health Summit in Berlin.  The Summit merged many different sectors and was held under the "patronage" of French President Nicolas Sarkozy and the German Chancellor Angela Merkel.  Comprised of panel discussions, working sessions, and stakeholder meetings, the Summit was an opportunity to have a global discussion and debate on tackling all the tough questions in healthcare -- such as access, affordability, high quality care, and the use of technology.

I was fascinated by many of the panels -- topics like Evolution and Disease of Modern Environments.  "Darwinian Medicine" was a big theme of the conference; in other words, looking at modern epidemics like asthma and obesity through the prism of evolution.  One way to look at these sorts of modern epidemics is the notion that they've resulted from changes in the environment which our bodies cannot evolve quickly enough to.  Fascinating.

Of course, healthcare delivery and accessibility on a global scale was another key Summit theme.  Anant spoke on a panel around global health, joined by senior directors from organizations like the World Economic Forum.  A question that Anant was continually asked was: "Is LifeSpring replicable outside India?"  I was asked more bluntly at the World Health Congress in DC: "When will LifeSpring open in the US?"  

While there's clearly still so much to do here in India, I often think about the lessons that LifeSpring can teach the rest of the world around areas of access, affordability, and high-quality patient-centric care.  The need is certainly there.  The question of scaling internationally is definitely an interesting one to continually revisit and explore.