Rishi Sonwal

During the India’s 80th Independence Day patriotic celebration, an important public-health message came that deserves attention. The Union Minister Dr. Jitendra Singh called for making diabetes prevention a national priority, highlighting that rural India is no longer untouched by the diabetes epidemic. The occasion also saw the launch of the RSSDI Rural Outreach Digital Portal and VISHWAS Diabetes Awareness Video Library, aimed at taking diabetes awareness, screening, treatment, follow-up and digital health resources closer to communities. WHO estimates that around 77 million adults in India are living with type 2 diabetes, while nearly 25 million more are prediabetic. Also, millions are unaware of their status. This means diabetes prevention is beyond a clinical challenge. It is increasingly a health-system, digital-health and healthcare-communication challenge. India already has important building blocks for this transformation. ABDM, digital health platforms, structured health data...

I was scrolling through LinkedIn recently and noticed a pattern in how many hospital marketing and digital PR teams post patient success stories. To show clinical expertise, posts frequently include full patient names, face videos, specific diagnoses, and detailed procedure descriptions. The intent is completely understandable. Celebrating a complex surgery or a patient’s recovery is a proud moment for any clinical team, and patient trust is the hardest thing to build in healthcare. But as digital healthcare scales in India, it raises a critical question: Where do we draw the line between celebrating a medical win and protecting patient dignity? Often, the default defense is "we have signed patient consent." But as communicators, we have to look deeper at the ground reality: Consent Given in Vulnerability : A patient recovering from a major procedure feels immensely grateful to their doctors. Consent given during recovery isn't always fully informed about the fact that th...

Recently, during a discussion with a European healthtech company offering emergency response systems and aiming to enter the Indian healthcare ecosystem, a critical question came to mind regarding patient data privacy and ownership. While digital health infrastructure empowers patients with data ownership. But for hospitals implementing these tools, the real test isn't just technical—it is communicational. -Who legally preserves the data versus who merely processes it? -How do hospitals constructively communicate data safety to patients, especially in tier-2 and tier-3 areas where assisted consent is needed? -How can healthtech providers design onboarding flows that make a patient feel secure sharing their information via OTP? As we advance toward a fully integrated digital health nation, technology is only half the battle. The other half is building absolute clarity and trust through proactive communication. Hospital leaders, HealthTech innovators, and public health colleagues—how...

India is steadily moving towards a connected mobility ecosystem. The Ministry of Road Transport & Highways has invited public comments on its draft notification proposing Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) Communication Systems, enabling vehicles to exchange real-time information for improved road safety, traffic efficiency and emergency response. The proposal is an important milestone in India's intelligent transport journey. While much of the discussion has understandably focused on accident prevention and road safety, one aspect deserves greater attention from the healthcare sector—Emergency Vehicle Alert. For hospitals and emergency healthcare providers, this is much more than a transport policy. It has the potential to become a healthcare policy enabler. Why This Matters to Healthcare Every ambulance represents the beginning of emergency medical care. Whether responding to a road accident, cardiac arrest, stroke or other life-threatening emergency, the first few minutes often determ...

A policy perspective on India's evolving Medical Value Travel ecosystem. The Uttar Pradesh Government's recent announcement to develop a Regional Medical Hub at Jewar marks an important step towards strengthening India's Medical Value Travel (MVT) ecosystem. The initiative aligns well with the Union Government's Budget 2026 vision of developing five Medical Value Travel hubs across the country, recognising healthcare not only as a public service but also as a strategic economic sector. MVT: Where India Stands? India's healthcare ecosystem is already gaining global recognition. According to Government of India data, over 5.07 lakh foreign nationals visited India specifically for medical treatment in 2025, accounting for nearly 5.5% of all foreign tourist arrivals. The global Medical Value Travel market, valued at around USD 115.6 billion in 2022, is projected to reach approximately USD 286 billion by 2030. India today attracts patients from Bangladesh, Nepal, Iraq, U...

After weeks of protests at Jantar Mantar, disruptions during the Monsoon Session, and an intense national debate over examination reforms, Parliament on Tuesday (July 28) finally began discussing the Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Amendment Bill, 2026. Unsurprisingly, much of the discussion has centred on strengthening examination security, accountability and preventing paper leaks. Having spent over a decade covering NEET, medical admissions, NMC, NBEMS and higher education policy as an education journalist, I have followed this issue through multiple policy cycles. During those years, I noticed that discussions around paper leaks almost always focused on security, technology and accountability. Rarely did they extend to the economics of medical education itself. Across parliamentary discussions, television debates and expert forums, several constructive suggestions continue to emerge—strengthening examination processes, identifying leak points, improving confidentia...