WISH Foundation To Raise $100 Mn Healthcare Innovation Fund


NEW DELHI: WISH Foundation committed to raise $100 million (around 620 crore) innovation fund with an aim to scale up innovation in the healthcare sector.

The foundation, brainchild of the Co-Founder and Co- Chairman of IGATE Corporation Sunil Wadhwani, is looking to provide support to up to 100 innovators in healthcare sector in the next decade.

"Around 30 to 40 per cent of the $100 million healthcare innovation fund will be raised by us and core partners such as large foundations initially and then others would add on to it," Wadhwani told PTI.

The Wadhwani Initiative for Sustainable Healthcare (WISH) foundation is a not-for-profit society.

"We have in partnership with IFC recently completed a nationwide mapping of most promising healthcare innovation. We are in the process of identifying 10-15 high impact innovators that we will soon start supporting," Wadhwani said.

Speaking on the sidelines of Scale Healthcare Innovations Summit, Wadhwani suggested a road map for providing better healthcare in the country.

He said the first step to make a significant change in improving healthcare for poor families was to identify the most promising healthcare innovators, who can leverage on technology and provide affordable solutions, and help them scale up with all possible support.

Secondly, there must be partnership with state governments of six to eight high priority and under served states to strengthen their primary healthcare delivery systems using innovative approaches, he added.

Developing a national ecosystem for ongoing large scale healthcare innovation is another important step, Wadhwani said adding "Let us bring all stake holders together so that the can connect, share ideas and collaborate."

The most important step for the future is to build a knowledge hub to support high impact innovators, he added.

Source: PTI