The document discusses the role of marketing in the healthcare industry in India. It provides details on key topics such as health marketing, marketing of healthcare services and products, demographic and trend factors influencing healthcare marketing, government policies impacting marketing, and privacy concerns. It also outlines the growth of the Indian healthcare sector, common marketing strategies used, key investments and initiatives by the government to promote the industry. The road ahead discusses ongoing opportunities in areas like medical devices, diagnostics, telemedicine, and investments in healthcare infrastructure to meet demand.

1. Mr. Abhirup Ganguli
Assistant Professor, Dept. Of
Biotechnology
Swami Vivekananda Institute of Modern
Sciences
Kolkata
Role of Marketing in Healthcare
Industry

2. Health Marketing:
 Health marketing is a new approach to public health
that applies traditional marketing principles and
theories alongside science-based strategies to
prevention, health promotion and health protection.
 Health marketing is one of the ways through which
advancements in medicine and in health-protecting
services like insurance are made widely known.
 A good example is the current drive in Kenya to
promote circumcision among communities that do
not customarily circumcise.
 Medical researchers have recently documented that
circumcision is 65% effective in preventing HIV
infection among men.

3. "Health marketing" is a term rarely used
in public health and related
disciplines.
"Social marketing" or "integrated
marketing communication" are more
commonly used in public health and
other disciplines to refer to marketing-
based planning frameworks for public
health communication.

4. Marketing of Healthcare Services
and Products:
 Marketing healthcare services and products presents
unique challenges compared to other consumer
goods and services, because it deals with health
behaviours as opposed to just purchasing behaviors.
 Health marketing includes awareness and education
but also behavior adoption or change, which are
difficult and can take time.
 Healthcare marketing is also influenced by a
changing population and related problems, advances
in research and other external factors.

5. Demographics:
 Population changes influence not just how you
market healthcare goods and services, but
depending on where you work, what gets marketed.
 For example, as people live longer, companies may
choose to create products and services tailored to an
aging population or to their adult children serving as
caregivers.
 There may also be different health concerns among
different ethnic groups.
 Since different groups -- age, ethnic, income level --
respond to different marketing messages or venues,
health care marketers must take care to develop
marketing strategies customized for different

6. Trends:
 People can reverse healthy behaviors for many
reasons, although the reasons may be complex,
which makes marketing a challenge.
 For example, even though research has shown the
negative effects of too much sun exposure, different
age groups respond differently.
 Marketers are tasked with understanding why;
perhaps young people are caught up in a trend of
going to tanning salons, believing that to be safer
than the outdoor sun.
 Economic trends can also affect healthy habits, such
as eating well, purchasing medication or equipment
such as glucose testing kits for diabetics.

7. Policies:
 Healthcare marketers need to understand how
government health policies and guidelines might
impact marketing efforts.
 Changes in health insurance laws can affect how
people seek preventative or emergency health care,
for example.
 Removing prescription requirements from popular
medicines can increase their access to people, yet
the over-the-counter cost may then become
prohibitive to some, or there may be concerns about
the abuse of a product without a doctor’s
prescription, so additional education may be
necessary.

8. Privacy:
 Privacy is a paramount concern in healthcare
marketing, particularly for marketers employed by a
health care provider such as a hospital or clinic.
 You need to understand and strictly adhere to
privacy laws and how you can and cannot use
patient health information to market goods and
services.
 For other marketers, such as those working for a
manufacturer of healthcare products, research will
help you craft your marketing messages to convey
sensitivity; for example, marketing drug-testing kits to
parents to use on their teenagers or condoms for
prevention of sexually transmitted diseases.

9. Marketing Strategies in the Indian
Healthcare Sector:
 The Indian healthcare sector has emerged as
one of the largest service sectors in India in
terms of revenue and employment, and the
sector is expanding rapidly.
 The sector has registered a growth of 9.3
percent between 2000-2009, comparable to
the sectoral growth rate of other emerging
economies such as China, Brazil and Mexico.
 At the current growth rate, the healthcare
industry in India will touch US$ 275 billion by
2020, according to a recent press release by
the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).

10. The high growth of the industry is primarily driven because
of domestic reasons and some of these are:-
 India's growing population and the increase in the
number of affordable middle class people in the country.
 India is seeing a shift in disease pattern from
communicable diseases to the high incidence of non-
communicable and lifestyle-related diseases which has
triggered a demand for specialized treatment.
 In-patient revenues of hospitals have increased since
expenditure on lifestyle-related diseases has risen
substantially.
 Rise in insured population and widening demand supply
gap.
 A growing elderly population is also pushing for better
facilities in the country.

11. Marketing of healthcare
services:
 Healthcare services have certain characteristics that
differentiate them from products.
 Services are perishable, intangible and variable.
 Marketing is interplay between producers and
consumers.
 However, the difference comes in marketing tangible
and intangible products.
 While products that can be seen, felt, touched and
tasted are tangible, the products that are based on
post-sale experience are intangible.
 Consumers can come up with desirable parameters
for a tangible product in terms of productivity,
efficiency, etc.

12. Marketing of healthcare services encompasses the
analysis and management of four factors (also called the
four P's) essential to the delivery of health care:-
 Product i.e. the type of health care service to be offered
 Place i.e. how the service will be delivered to the patient,
location and mode of access.
 Price, often much bigger than the money price- which the
patients pays in terms of pain, sufferings and rude
treatment at the hands of hospital personnel and
 Promotion i.e. how and what the prospective patient
learns about the organization and the services it offers.
 Some marketing experts however feel that a fifth P for
successful marketing is public relations. Good public
relations build up goodwill and an image to influence
opinions, which ultimately lead consumers to choose the
hospital and its services. According to Dr Saumitra
Bharadwaj, marketing manager at Fortis hospital,
NOIDA, "hospitals should create goodwill for themselves
and should not completely rely on advertisements".

13.  Until recently, marketing was considered by
many as an unorthodox way of promoting
healthcare.
 As a matter of fact, hospital being a service
industry with a noble cause cannot utilize
advertising techniques in the way other
industries can.
 The new view of marketing is that it is the
science and art of finding, retaining and
growing profitable customers.
 Marketing strategies in the hospital industry
would include the various aspects of retaining

14. The various factors that advocate the need for an in depth
understanding of why marketing strategies are important
in the hospital industry is broadly classified under the
following heads:-
 customer based factors
 environment based factors
Today the customer is far more knowledgeable about the
diseases and their choices of treatment, cost conscious,
demanding more value addition and wants to reduce
his/her risk by dealing with trustworthy companies,
services and products.
In the past customers would chiefly rate a hospital based
upon the quality of medical services provided.
Studies have shown that consumers today have a host of
factors based on which they rate the hospital.
These include clean environment, availability of latest
technology, hospital staff personnel mannerisms while

15.  There exists perhaps the need for greater
transparency, honesty and better healthcare
delivery with quality of service.
 Delighted customers are more likely to be loyal
customers and loyal customers are more likely to
give the company a larger share of their
business.
 The landscape of healthcare is changing, and it’s
changing at a pace that many companies are
struggling to keep up with.
 Gone are the days when we create a device,
match it to market research and reimbursement
norms, and expect that the healthcare system
will adopt it.

16.  Consumer technology is enabling entirely new
medical use cases with the proliferation of smart
phones, cellular data networks, wi-fi access, and
Bluetooth-enabled devices.
 These technologies have opened up more
consumer-centric interfaces, opportunities for
patient-physician interactions, and new consumer-
driven healthcare experiences as well as ways to do
real-time monitoring, compliance tracking, efficacy
surveillance, and physiological data collection.
 Healthcare has become one of India's largest
sectors - both in terms of revenue and employment.
 The industry comprises hospitals, medical devices,
clinical trials, outsourcing, telemedicine, medical

17.  The Indian healthcare delivery system is categorised
into two major components - public and private.
 The Government, i.e. public healthcare system
comprises limited secondary and tertiary care
institutions in key cities and focuses on providing
basic healthcare facilities in the form of primary
healthcare centers (PHCs) in rural areas.
 The private sector provides majority of secondary,
tertiary and quaternary care institutions with a major
concentration in metros, tier I and tier II cities.
 India's primary competitive advantage lies in its large
pool of well-trained medical professionals.
 Also, India's cost advantage compared to peers in
Asia and Western countries is significant - cost of
surgery in India is one-tenth of that in the US or

18. Healthcare sector growth trend in India
The Indian healthcare industry size is expected to touch US$ 160 billion
by 2017 and US$ 280 billion by 2020.

19. Shares in healthcare spending in India, 2015
Private sector's share in healthcare delivery is expected
to increase from 66 per cent in 2005 to 81 per cent by
2015.

20. Per-capita healthcare expenditure in India
Per capita healthcare expenditure in India is estimated to grow at a CAGR
of 15.4 per cent during 2008-15 to reach US$ 88.7.

21. Market break-up by revenues
Of total healthcare revenues in the country hospitals account for 71 per
cent.

22. Market Size:
 According to estimates, the overall Indian health
care market today is US$ 65 billion, of which the
hospital supplies and health care equipment
segment is believed to be only around US$ 4.5-5
million.
 Health care delivery, which includes hospitals,
nursing homes and diagnostics centres, and
pharmaceuticals, constitutes 65 per cent of the
overall market.
 India requires 600,000 to 700,000 additional
beds over the next five to six years, which
potentially throws an opportunity of more than
US$ 25-30 billion.

23.  Overall the number of transactions in the healthcare
space is going to grow as companies are seeking
growth capital.
 The average investment size by private equity funds
in healthcare chains has increased to US$ 20-30
million which was around US$ 5-15 million.
 The Indian medical tourism industry is pegged at
US$ 1 billion per annum, growing at around 18 per
cent and is expected to touch US$ 2 billion by 2015.
 There is a significant scope for enhancing healthcare
services considering that healthcare spending as a
percentage of GDP is rising. Rural India, which
accounts for over 70 per cent of the population, is set
to emerge as a potential demand source.
 Only three per cent of specialist physicians cater to

24. Investments:
 The hospital and diagnostic centres attracted foreign
direct investment (FDI) worth US$ 2,793.72 million
between April 2000 and January 2015, according to data
released by the Department of Industrial Policy and
Promotion (DIPP).
Some of the major investments in the Indian healthcare
industry are as follows:
 Mylan Inc has signed a deal to acquire the female health
care businesses of Famy Care Ltd, a specialty women’s
health care company, for US$ 750 million in cash and
additional contingent payments of up to US$ 50 million.
 Sanofi-Synthelabo (India) Ltd had invested Rs 90 crore
(US$ 14.47 million) in Apollo Sagar Clinics Ltd (ASCL), a
unit of its subsidiary Apollo Health and Lifestyle Ltd.
 Apollo Hospitals Enterprise (AHEL) plans to add another
2,000 beds over the next two financial years, at a cost of
around Rs 1,500 crore (US$ 241.24 million), as per Mr
Prathap C Reddy, Founder and Executive Chairman,
Apollo Hospitals.

25.  Temasek Holdings Pte Ltd has acquired the entire
17.74 per cent stake of Punj Lloyd Ltd in Global
Health Pvt Ltd, which owns and operates the
Medanta super specialty hospital in Gurgaon,
Haryana.
 CDC, the UK’s development finance institution, has
invested US$ 48 million in Narayana Hrudayalaya
hospitals, a multi-speciality healthcare provider. With
this investment, Narayana Health will expand
affordable treatment in eastern, central and western
India.
 Apollo Health and Lifestyle Ltd (AHLL), a wholly-
owned subsidiary of Apollo Hospitals Enterprise, has
acquired Nova Specialty Hospitals at an estimated
cost of Rs 135-145 crore (US$ 21.71-22.32 million).

26. Government Initiatives:
 India's universal health plan that aims to offer
guaranteed benefits to a sixth of the world's population
will cost an estimated Rs 1.6 trillion (US$ 25.73 billion)
over the next four years.
Some of the major initiatives taken by the Government of
India to promote Indian healthcare industry are as
follows:
 The Competition Commission of India (CCI) in its
meeting has approved the proposed merger between
Sun Pharma and Ranbaxy, subject to the parties inter
alia carrying out the divestiture of their products relating
to seven relevant markets for formulations.
 India and Sweden celebrated five years of memorandum
of understanding (MoU). The cooperation in healthcare
between India and Sweden will help in filling gaps in
research and innovative technology to aid provisioning of
quality healthcare.

27.  Mr J P Nadda, Union Minister for Health &
Family Welfare, Government of India has
launched the National Deworming initiative
aimed to protect more than 24 crore children in
the ages of 1-19 years from intestinal worms, on
the eve of the National Deworming Day.
 Under the National Health Assurance Mission,
Prime Minister Mr Narendra Modi's government
would provide all citizens with free drugs and
diagnostic treatment, as well as insurance cover
to treat serious ailments.
 All the government hospitals in Andhra Pradesh
would get a facelift with a cost of Rs 45 crore
(US$ 7.23 million), besides the establishment of

28. Road Ahead:
 India is a land full of opportunities for players in the
medical devices industry.
 The country has also become one of the leading
destinations for high-end diagnostic services with
tremendous capital investment for advanced
diagnostic facilities, thus catering to a greater
proportion of population.
 Besides, Indian medical service consumers have
become more conscious towards their healthcare
upkeep.
 Telemedicine is a fast emerging sector in India.
 In 2012, the telemedicine market in India was valued
at US$ 7.5 million, and is expected to grow at a

29.  India's competitive advantage also lies in the
increased success rate of Indian companies in
getting Abbreviated New Drug Application
(ANDA) approvals.
 India also offers vast opportunities in R&D as
well as medical tourism.
 There are vast opportunities for investment in
healthcare infrastructure in both urban and rural
India.
 About 1.8 million beds are required by the end of
2025.
 Additionally, 1.54 million doctors and 2.4 million
nurses are required to meet the growing

30. Impact of Social Media on Health
Care Industry:
 Social media is one of the most talked about
disruptions to marketing in decades, but how
is it impactful for the health care industry?
 In a generation that is more likely to go online
to answer general health questions then ask
a doctor, what role does social media play in
this process?
 Let’s dive into some meaningful statistics and
figures to clearly illustrate how social media
has impacted health care in the last few

31. 1. More than 40% of consumers say that information
found via social media affects the way they deal
with their health. (source: Mediabistro)
2. 18 to 24 year olds are more than 2x as likely than 45
to 54 year olds to use social media for health-
related discussions. (source: Mediabistro)
3. 90% of respondents from 18 to 24 years of age said
they would trust medical information shared by
others on their social media networks. (source:
Search Engine Watch)
4. 31% of health care organizations have specific
social media guidelines in writing. (source: Institute
for Health)
5. 19% of smart phone owners have at least one
health app on their phone. Exercise, diet, and
weight apps are the most popular types. (source:

32. 6. From a recent study, 54% of patients are very
comfortable with their providers seeking advice
from online communities to better treat their
conditions. (source: Mediabistro)
7. 31% of health care professionals use social
media for professional networking. (source:
MedTechMedia)
8. 41% of people said social media would affect
their choice of a specific doctor, hospital, or
medical facility. (source: Demi & Cooper
Advertising and DC Interactive Group)
9. 30% of adults are likely to share information
about their health on social media sites with
other patients, 47% with doctors, 43% with
hospitals, 38% with a health insurance
company and 32% with a drug company.
(source: Fluency Media)

33. 10. 26% of all hospitals in the US participate in
social media. (source: Demi & Cooper Advertising
and DC Interactive Group)
11. The most accessed online resources for health
related information are: 56% searched WebMD,
31% on Wikipedia, 29% on health magazine
websites, 17% used Facebook, 15% used
YouTube, 13% used a blog or multiple blogs,
12% used patient communities, 6% used Twitter
and 27% used none of the above. (source:
Mashable)
12. Parents are more likely to seek medical
answers online, 22% use Facebook and 20%
use YouTube. Of non-parents, 14% use
Facebook and 12% use YouTube to search for
health care related topics. (source: Mashable)

34. 13. 60% of doctors say social media improves the
quality of care delivered to patients. (source: Demi &
Cooper Advertising and DC Interactive Group)
14. 2/3 of doctors are use social media for professional
purposes, often preferring an open forum as
opposed to a physician-only online community.
(source: EMR Thoughts)
15. YouTube traffic to hospital sites has increased 119%
year-over-year. (source: Google’s Think Insights)
16. International Telecommunications Union estimates
that global penetration of mobile devices has
reached 87% as of 2011. (source: mHealth Watch)
17. 28% of health-related conversations on Facebook
are supporting health-related causes, followed by
27% of people commenting about health
experiences or updates. (source: Infographics

35. 18. 60% of social media users are the most likely to
trust social media posts and activity by doctors
over any other group. (source: Infographics
Archive)
19. 23% of drug companies have not addressed
security and privacy in terms of social media.
(source: Mediabistro)
20. The Mayo Clinic’s podcast listeners rose by
76,000 after the clinic started using social
media. (source: Infographics Archive)
21. 60% of physicians most popular activities on
social are following what colleagues are sharing
and discussing. (source: Health Care
Communication)
22. 49% of those polled expect to hear from their
doctor when requesting an appointment or
follow-up discussion via social media within a

36. 23. 40% of people polled said information
found on social media affects how someone
coped with a chronic condition, their view
of diet and exercise and their selection of a
physician. (source: HealthCare Finance
News)
24. Of more than 1,500 hospitals nationwide
who have an online presence, Facebook is
most popular. (source: WHPRMS)

37. THANK YOU