
20th November 2019
Author: Mr Pavan Sannuti and Dr Vandana Sarda
Blog CATEGORY: Diagnostics 4.0 Webinars
ABOUT MIRAIBEN CHATTERJEE
Miraiben is the Director of the Social Security Team at Self-Employed Women’s Association, (popularly known as SEWA). She is responsible for SEWA’s Health Care, Child Care and Insurance programmes. Miraiben is currently Chairperson of the National Insurance VimoSEWA Cooperative Ltd and actively involved with the Lok Swasthya Health Cooperative, of which she is a founder. Both cooperatives are promoted by SEWA. In addition, she is Chairperson of the Gujarat State Women’s SEWA Cooperative Federation of 106 primary cooperatives with 3 lakh members. Miraiben joined SEWA in 1984 and was its General Secretary after its Founder, Ela Bhatt.

Miraiben serves on the Boards of several organizations, including the Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI), Save the Children and PRADAN. She was advisor to the National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganized Sector and is in the Advisory Group on Community Action of the National Rural Health Mission. She was also a Commissioner in the World Health Organization’s Commission on the Social Determinants of Health. She was a member of the National Advisory Council (NAC), appointed by the Prime Minister of India in 2010. She was conferred the Global Achievement award by the School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University.
She has a B.A. from Harvard University in History and Science and a Masters from Johns Hopkins University’s School of Public Health, USA.
S1.E2 KEY WEBINAR HIGHLIGHTS
20:44 to 21:15: | Miraiben highlighted her take on the last mile population. She mentions key aspects that they have are deep insights, experience and know better than anybody how to reach the last mile. According to her SEWA has deep faith in their ability, strength and commitment including in the use of technology |
23:10 to 24:05 | According to Miraiben the healthcare focus areas for SEWA are as follows:
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24:13 to 25:17 | Miraiben elaborates on the recent innovation at SEWA – the rural and urban SEWA Shakti Kendras in Gujarat and other states
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31:09 to 31:17 | Miraiben mentions that there is a strong need for early detection and screening at the grassroots level, at the last mile and at the doorstep |
31:42 to 31:55 | This [technology development] can be planned in a decentralised manner. Those developing the technology sit with local people and actually plan together |
34:28 to 34:44 | Miraiben’s observation and experience with technology deployment
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35:14 to 35:22 | Back-up support, training and maintenance should be provided for health technology |
36:19 to 37:25 | Here Miraiben talks about the importance of revenue model
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37:40 to 38:08 | Here Miraiben talks about the solutions for healthcare reach in India (a country as large and diverse as ours) and about how to solve the problem of many of the medical equipment gathering dust in sub centers and PHCs dotting our country
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43:28 to 44:21 | Here Miraiben talks about her view on operalisation of the Ayushmann Bharat program
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44:30 to 45:07 | Miraiben ends by cautioning that ‘finally this (healthcare services) is all going to be unaffordable.’ Unless we have strong prevention, screening, early detection and diagnosis and where Point of Care diagnostics would be crucial at the last mile, we will see healthcare cost going through the roof |
ABOUT DIAGNOSTICS 4.0
Many of you participated in the MedTechConnect All Partner Workshop in July at the Cyient office in Hyderabad. We had a truly diverse crowd, with approximately 40 partners from organizations across the value chain present in the room. to ideate, collaborate and create solutions to very specific problem statements. We worked through structured and interactive sessions to identify specific areas in which we could drive impact.
We also left the room agreeing that it was important for the ecosystem to continuously meet, and this Webinar series is an attempt to do just that.
Diagnostics 4.0 webinar series is divided into Seasons, each season will have episodes. The first season is Diagnostics at the Last Mile. Diagnostics 4.0 is the latest offering and endeavour from MedTechConnect in an effort to strengthen the medical technologies ecosystem in India.
During our second episode we had the honour of talking with Dr. Miraiben Chatterjee. She spoke with Dr. Vandana and Mr. Pavan

For the new partners, MedTechConnect is a collaborative healthcare ecosystem platform led by Cyient and Xynteo/India2022 coalition. Our vision is to accelerate the journey of medical technology from lab to market and help improve affordability, availability, and accessibility of these solutions to the last mile.
Founded in 1991, Cyient provides engineering and technology solutions to global industry leaders. We deliver innovative solutions that add value to businesses through the deployment of robust processes and state-of-the-art technology. We work across multiple industries, from Aerospace to communications, transportation, energy. We have also been active in the Medical technology space for the past 10 years, and is one of our fastest growing industries.CYIENT is a partner in the Xynteo/India2022 coalition and lead the Healthcare impact track.
Xynteo is a platform for galvanising leaders and catalysing ideas – and fusing them into new projects, for new growth. India2022 is a business – led coalition committed to leveraging the power of collaboration to unlock future – fit growth opportunities in India , aligned with the government of India’s development goals. In Healthcare we are looking to make affordable diagnostics accessible to as many people as possible.
