Apollo plans to enter pharma business

Chennai: Apollo Hospitals group will, at some point in time in the future, get into manufacture or research of pharmaceuticals, the group’s Chairman, Dr Pratap Reddy, said.

“We are in the healthcare business, we should be in pharmaceuticals too,” Dr Reddy said, adding that he would like Apollo to get into pharmaceutical research.

“We deliberated on this question about six months ago,” he said, adding that it was, however, decided that Apollo’s resources were more needed in expansion of hospitals. Answering a question, Dr Reddy admitted that the group had been interested in taking over Orchid Pharmaceuticals, but said that he would not join a race.

Dr Reddy, however, stressed that the group had no immediate plans of getting into pharmaceuticals.

Apollo today formally signed an agreement with Ericsson India for technology or providing telemedicine over the mobile telephone network. The agreement was inked by Dr K Ganapathy, President, Apollo Telemedicine Networking Foundation and Mr P Balaji, Vice President – Marketing & Strategy, Ericsson India Pvt Ltd.

At present, telemedicine can be provided at places that have broadband connectivity. But to reach the thousands of villages that have no broadband link, mobile phones can be used for making diagnosis and giving medical advice.

While this can be done even today, the task is better done when 3G-based services are rolled out by the telecom operators—for which, of course, the government will first have to allocate spectrum for 3G operations.

Ericsson will bring in the 3G-HSPA (high speed packet access) technology and Apollo will use it for telemedicine. But for now, Apollo will have to content with mobile phones with cameras.

Dr Ganapathy, who is also the Head of the Division of Stereotactic Radiosurgery at Apollo, said the Apollo Telemedicine Networking Foundation has 113 centres, most of them in small towns. Nine of them are outside the country. People go to these centres and are usually attended to by doctors sitting in Chennai.

Each day, Apollo’s doctors do around 60 consultancies, more than half of them are by doctors in Chennai. The demand for telemedicine is growing annually by about 20 per cent, Dr Ganapathy said.