Is Sri Lanka ready for healthcare entrepreneurship?

MyDoctor Founder and Healthcare Entrepreneur Dr. Harsha Jayakody addressing a gathering of doctors at the launch of ‘Sri Lanka Connected Health Alliance’ at SLMA auditorium 

Entrepreneurship is the ability to create new ventures. It may be from existing or new concepts, ideas and vision. An entrepreneur is a person who will take risks at the correct time to create new ventures. He or she is an innovator and may reward or may not depending on the successfulness of the venture. 

With the advancement of technology, it seems that the healthcare sector is opening out for a huge variety of new ventures. It seems like healthcare and entrepreneurship is going hand to hand. By utilising new technology solutions, to improve the quality of healthcare and streamline the services, processes while lowering the costs is called ‘healthcare entrepreneurship’. 

In any country’s economy, the entrepreneurship plays a vital role. According to the Department of Census and Statistics, only less than 2% of the population is considered as entrepreneurs in Sri Lanka which is less than the other Asian countries in the region. This is mainly because our society prefers traditional or conventional paths rather than risk-taking ventures. In a country’s perspective, encouraging entrepreneurship is very important. Specially by introducing entrepreneurship in schools and university level curriculums, establishing a national guidance centre for entrepreneurship, exchanging success stories of other countries may guide the youngsters towards becoming entrepreneurs in the future. 

When it comes to healthcare, the numbers are very low and even negligible. Other than very few of the healthcare start-ups in Sri Lanka, such as MyDoctor, Ayubo Life, HealthNetBuy, oDoc, there are no significant ventures being created with new innovation with regards to healthcare in private sector. Doctors, nurses and other healthcare providers have a bigger role to play with healthcare entrepreneurship. Being the experts in the domain they would be the best to start new ventures, promote innovation knowing the short-comes and the true ground requirement. But there is no proper guidance given as healthcare entrepreneurship is not even mentioned in the medical schools. 

According to the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, there is an 11% growth in per capita health spending during 2016 to 2019. Though being a developing country, the island’s health indicators are similar to more developed countries in the region. According to WHO statistics, Sri Lanka has 43.94% of private expenditure on health as a percentage of total expenditure on health (2014) which is growing. This shows that the healthcare market in Sri Lanka is further growing creating a lot of opportunities and avenues for new ventures. 

Dr. Harsha Jayakody (Healthcare Entrepreneur) stated, “It is now the correct time to promote healthcare entrepreneurship in Sri Lanka as the talents, creativeness and the passion of the healthcare professionals in Sri Lanka is at a higher level compared to other countries.” He further stated, “What is lacking is the proper guidance, support and funding.”