Post-Budget reaction: Sugandh Ahluwalia, Chief Strategy Officer, Indian Spinal Injuries Centre

An important takeaway is a push to the public-private partnership by making available facilities in select ICMR labs for research by public and private medical institutions. As we were expecting some incentives in Medical Value Tourism, so overall thrust to promote tourism, thereby extending facilities to overseas tourists, would also benefit medical tourism in the country. With the announced measures, the healthcare industry is hopeful to conduct more interdisciplinary research and develop cutting-edge applications and scalable problem solutions.

A new programme to promote research and innovation and pharmaceuticals, through centres of excellence is a very pragmatic move and the experts feel that this will take India to a new high in terms of dominance in global markets.