There’s a article in The Wall Street Journal today about Dr. Devi Shetty and Narayana Hrudayalaya. They call Dr. Shetty the Henry Ford of heart surgery, alluding to the process innovation that has led to a big drop in the cost of surgery without any compromise in quality. Dr. Shetty has always been very popular in India, but it’s great to see Narayana Hrudayalaya get international recognition.

What most people don’t know is that Narayana Hrudayalaya is very similar to Aravind Eye Care, which pioneered the high quality, low cost care through scale model. I wrote the final paper for the “Market based mechanisms for poverty alleviation” course I took this semester on Aravind and was amazed at the scale of their achievement. I was always aware of Narayana Hrudayalaya (I went past the hospital on my way to work for a year!), but not of the model which made them so successful.

There is an opportunity for a Aravind Eye Care or Narayana Hrudayalaya in every area of healthcare – we just need the people with the tenacity of Dr. G. Venkataswamy or Dr. Devi Shetty to make it possible. This is an area of innovation where India has all the right advantages – large patient population, skilled doctors, low cost manpower and access to the best medical technology. There was a time when people in India had to go to developed countries to get the best medical care. I’m happy to see that trend being reversed over time.