Bangkok: Health technology and preventive healthcare are at an inflection point and India is ready to leverage technological advancements to drive wellness across the larger population, according to experts.”So I think we’re at this inflection point where we’ve understood the science of why disease happens in many cases. We’ve understood that there is genetics, but there’s also epigenetics related to lifestyle and that the body is giving us signals.”We need to pick up these signals early and therefore, the entire aspect of using wearables is going to enhance the clinical ecosystem and enhance the health and wellness ecosystem towards prevention,” Apollo Hospitals Joint Managing Director Sangita Reddy said.Speaking to PTI on the sidelines of the Garmin Health Summit in Bangkok, Reddy said India is ready to adapt to wearables as a preventive healthcare tool.”India has the connective ecosystem, thanks to the government and telecom service providers… Then you have Ayushman Bharat… every cross-section of people can be treated, they either have private insurance or they have public insurance.”You have the engineering talent which can innovate and build more AI algorithms. And you have the knowledge that the world is moving in this direction so we should ride the wave rather than being a passive recipient of the knowledge which is getting generated,” Reddy said, adding that India has a large enough market to scale solutions and amortise the cost of development across a larger ecosystem.Reddy, who delivered the keynote speech on “From Hospitals to Everywhere: Reimagining Care with AI and Technology” at the Garmin Health Summit on October 29, said she attended the event to create a partnership, and co-create algorithms applicable for India.”The answer may not be Garmin alone, it may be multiple other devices, but we need to understand the space and perfect the space for our ecosystem,” she said, adding that findings from these wearables could be crucial, specially in people with cardiovascular diseases and hypertension.
GARMIN HEALTH SUMMIT
US-based Garmin’s digital health solution arm Garmin Health organised a two-day health summit in Bangkok, bringing together global innovators and collaborators in the medtech space to showcase their products.Garmin reported USD 7.24 billion in revenue in 2025 and is aiming to push up the figure to USD 8.1 billion in 2026.Established in 2014, Garmin Health collaborates globally across healthcare, research, insurance, employee benefits, fitness, and defence industries.The company provides wearable technology, data and integration capabilities to collaborators who can develop experiences for their own patients, participants, members, employees, and customers.The Garmin Health Summit and Awards was started in 2018.During the summit innovators and entrepreneurs from around the world showcased their products. They highlighted the advancements in healthtech where even a decade back the use of such watches was limited to counting the number of steps daily, but have now expanded to tracking sleep, mood, stress levels, etc.
GARMIN’S INDIA VISION
While Garmin Health products are available in India, the company does not have significant presence in the country yet.Garmin Health Global Sales Senior Director Jorn Watzke said, “Garmin Health has seen great interest from early collaborators like Apollo Hospitals and hopes to continue growing its presence in India across many different industries. India is a great opportunity and it is certainly ready to adapt to our technologies,” he told PTI.Apollo Hospitals and Garmin Health joined hands for a scheme ‘Grameen by Gramin’, wherein the healthtech company provided 100 watches to residents of Aragonda village in Andhra Pradesh.As part of the programme, Apollo is looking at patients with diabetes and hypertension and measuring their health indicators. “So what we are doing is to try to measure standard indicators you’d use in somebody with diabetes and hypertension, but then track it over time to see how we actually make an impact even in a rural population,” Reddy added.
