Apollo Hospitals today launched India’s first ProHealth Score, a digital tool that tells you how healthy you are. “The tool is designed to assist people in making informed decisions about themselves,” says Dr Sathya Sriram, Chief Executive Officer, Apollo Preventive Health.
The tool evaluates factors such as family history, lifestyle and current symptoms and generates a personalised numeric indicator of a person’s health and provides simple corrective suggestions for improvement.
The tool, which one can use by scanning a QR code, has been launched on the heels of the healthcare group’s study, titled ‘India Health Report, 2024’, which shows that there is a surge in India in cancer and mental health disorders and metabolic diseases—diabetes, hypertension and obesity.
At a press conference here today, Dr Madhu Sasidhar, President & CEO, Apollo Hospitals, said that there is an increase in non-communicable diseases—cardiovascular diseases, cancer and respiratory ailments—which account for 63 per cent of deaths in the country.
Cancer cases are projected to rise from 1.39 million in 2020 to 1.57 million in 2025—a 13 per cent growth in five years, the report says. Further, cancer afflicts Indians at an earlier age than in the developed countries, it says.
The report paints a grim picture of health of Indians, noting that 66 per cent of the people are in ‘prehypertensive stage’, one in three are pre-diabetic (one in four have diabetes) and one in four are at risk of disturbed sleep. Dr. Sasidhar said these could be attributed mainly to lifestyle—particularly, eating habits and sedentary life.
The report has been prepared essentially from Apollo Hospital’s data base—it draws upon the data from 1.3 million health checks done at Apollo, over 750 customer survey on preventive health checks and other sources such as National Family Health Survey and National Cancer Registry Program Report.
Apollo Hospital’s Vice-Chairperson, Dr Preetha Reddy stressed on the need for early check-up to catch any incipient issues. Dr Anupam Sibal, a medical professional with Apollo said that it was wrong to say, “I am not going to have a health check-up because these guys are going to find something,” because early detection helps a lot.