Devi Shetty says technology could break the link between wealth and healthcare in India
India’s medical bills still push families into poverty, but Narayana Health founder Dr Devi Shetty sees a different trajectory coming fast. In his view, artificial intelligence, robotics and workflow redesign could reduce healthcare costs by 40–50% over the next five to seven years, a change he believes could make India the first country to separate treatment quality from household wealth.
He frames that prediction as more than optimism. It is a claim about industrial scale, labor productivity and the way modern medicine is delivered inside hospitals. If the biggest costs in care come from manpower, inefficiency, duplication and prolonged length of stay, then software, automation and better process design can attack the bill at its source. In cardiovascular care especially, where imaging, triage, procedure planning and postoperative monitoring are already data heavy, the logic is compelling.
The backdrop is harsh. India continues to carry a heavy out-of-pocket burden, with prior studies cited in the conversation estimating that tens of millions of people were pushed into hidden poverty by medical spending and that a substantial share of households seeking care fell below the poverty line because of those costs. Against that reality, Shetty’s argument is not abstract. It is aimed at whether ordinary families can access high-quality treatment without selling assets or entering debt.
The healthcare system cannot keep charging scarcity prices for routine care.
A cardiac surgeon’s view of prevention starts with numbers, not slogans
Shetty’s advice to adults in their thirties and forties is blunt: know your numbers before chasing fitness trends or extreme exercise. He wants people to know blood sugar, kidney function, liver function, ECG findings and echocardiogram results, and he extends that caution to coronary evaluation with CT scanning in people past roughly 30 to 40 years of age.
The clinical logic is straightforward. Coronary disease often develops silently, and apparently fit adults can carry significant plaque burden without symptoms. A treadmill session or a marathon build-up does not protect someone with unstable coronary anatomy. In that setting, exercise can become the trigger that unmasks disease rather than the intervention that prevents it. His emphasis on cardiac evaluation before extreme sport is an argument for screening, risk stratification and earlier identification of hidden disease.
He also points to habits that can be adopted without a prescription pad. Walking, weight control and tobacco avoidance form the center of his preventive message. In his telling, small repeated actions matter more than dramatic but unsustainable routines. Walking after meals, even for 12 to 15 minutes, gets special attention because it can flatten postprandial glucose excursions, a practical benefit for people with diabetes or insulin resistance.
Obesity, sitting time and the erosion of everyday movement
When the discussion turns to obesity, Shetty resists the idea that policy alone can fix it. Education, not regulation, is his preferred lever. His concern is cultural as much as medical: children sit longer, playgrounds have disappeared from many schools, and physical education has lost ground in professional training. The result is a population that spends more hours indoors and more hours seated, often with too little spontaneous movement built into the day.
This matters because obesity does not behave like a cosmetic issue. It drives hypertension, diabetes, sleep disturbance, dyslipidemia and coronary risk, and those conditions feed directly into the kind of expensive disease burden that bankrupts families. In a country where outpatient behavior and lifestyle are still shaping the inpatient caseload, the boundary between prevention and treatment is thin. His argument is essentially that sedentary routines are manufacturing future cardiac admissions.
Simple steps can still shift physiology. Standing up every hour, walking during phone calls, commuting on foot where possible and moving after meals all sound modest, but they attack the same metabolic pathways that worsen insulin resistance and cardiovascular risk. The cumulative effect is larger than the gesture suggests.
Supplements, wearable data and the appeal of measurable health
Shetty is skeptical of supplements unless a physician has identified a clear medical need. His criticism is directed at products marketed as wellness shortcuts, not at deficiency treatment. The suspicion is that many of these interventions are sold as substitutes for the hard work of diet, activity and risk assessment.
Wearables, by contrast, receive his approval as a coming source of clinical information. He expects smartwatches to become more useful as they begin capturing broader physiologic signals. Even now, they are already pushing patients to count steps, notice heart rate patterns and think about daily movement in a more concrete way. The promise here is not glamour. It is continuous self-observation, which may improve adherence and help people recognize when their bodies are drifting off course.
Medical tourism depends on infrastructure as much as surgical skill
Shetty also sees India as a potential magnet for medical tourism, especially for cardiac care, but he says infrastructure remains the bottleneck. The country has highly skilled doctors and hospitals, yet international connectivity is uneven. Foreign patients can reach Delhi more easily than many other cities, and that concentration shapes where medical travel flows.
He compares India with countries that spend heavily on international promotion of their hospital systems. Visibility matters, but so does access. A patient from abroad who must change flights domestically may choose another destination before ever meeting a surgeon. The limitation is practical and commercial at the same time: without direct air links, better visas and a coordinated international presence, India’s care capacity remains underused.
There is a second layer here too. As hospitals become more efficient and surgery becomes more standardized, the ability to move patients across borders depends less on one exceptional surgeon and more on the surrounding ecosystem. Advertising, transportation, visas and post-procedure logistics all shape the decision to travel.
What his forecast means for heart care
At the center of Shetty’s remarks is a bet on cardiology as the proving ground for technology-driven affordability. Cardiac surgery and interventional care already rely on imaging, structured pathways and measurable outcomes, which makes them suitable for AI support and robotic assistance. If technology can shorten procedures, reduce errors, improve scheduling and raise throughput, the financial effect could be substantial.
Still, the forecast remains a forecast. Cost cuts of 40–50% across an entire system would require more than impressive machines in flagship centers. They would depend on training, regulatory acceptance, infrastructure, patient trust and the ability to scale gains beyond a few elite hospitals. The central question is not whether technology can lower costs inside a single institution; it is whether those savings can move into ordinary care at national scale without widening the gap between urban and rural access.
Shetty’s remarks leave one final tension in view: India may be close to a new era in which quality care is no longer reserved for the wealthy, but the path runs through logistics, prevention and disciplined use of technology, not through slogans alone.