“With the changing demographic composition of India and the shifting disease burden, we clearly need to augment the capacity of core clinical staff - physicians, nurses - with allied health professionals. These cadres should be capable of handling patient care and wellbeing related tasks outside of conventional healthcare delivery points such as hospitals. These include home care facilities, long-term nursing and rehabilitation facilities, transition care facilities, senior living facilities, etc. In addition, with the growing use of digital technology in healthcare, we also need allied health professionals who understand technology as well as patient care and can combine technical sophistication with empathetic care to improve patient outcomes.

While provision for creating these allied health professionals is a welcome move, we have to learn from the lessons about the quality of medical education and make sure that the products of these institutions are ready to hit the ground running and be assimilated into the health system so that they can make a difference to the patients' lives from day one.”