Experts from India and Portugal deliberated on the healthcare innovations and breakthrough medical technologies from both the countries and how they can utilise the S&T ecosystems to face common challenges and prepare better for crisis situations and pandemics such as Covid 19, at the Healthtech session of the DST-CII Tech summit.

“In the last couple of months, India’s response to the pandemic has shown that we are ready with a strong and robust S&T ecosystem that can optimally use existing knowledge and systems and plug the gaps to bring out solutions. This was a result of the collaboration to fight against the common challenge and the collective responsibility to be able to respond to what accelerated the pace of development,” said Dr. Renu Swarup, Secretary Department of Biotechnology Government of India, while addressing the Healthtech session of the summit.

She added that the pandemic has shown us that research and innovation is not an area where one can work on an individual level or in silos. It has to be a combined, collaborative effort which connects not only interdisciplinary groups but brings in different stakeholders, including people across the border.

Stressing on the need for connecting the research institutes to startups and industry, Dr. Renu Swarup said, “The whole purpose of connecting the research institutes to startups and industry is to boost the Make in India initiative.” She hoped that summits like these can provide avenues for technology cluster partnerships at the international level so that Indian startups have market access in other countries and startups from other countries have a soft landing space in India as well.

Mr. Ravi Kaushik CEO Transasia Bio-Medicals, Mr. Ganesh Sabat CEO Sahajanand Medical Technologies, Mr. Vishwprasad Alva Managing Director Skanray Technologies, Dr. Jitendra Sharma Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, AMTZ, Dr. Kiran Aatre Senior Manager – New Business Development Applied Materials India, Dr. Talita Marzon (Brazil) Renato Archer Information Technology Center, Mónica Dias Researcher IGC, Portugal who spoke in the session and highlighted some of the best healthcare innovations and breakthrough medical technologies in both the countries and discussed how these medical innovations can be harnessed for better preparedness to face pandemics such as Covid 19.