Strategic Role of GCCs in Healthcare

Global Capability Centers (GCCs) in the healthcare sector are evolving beyond traditional support roles to become strategic partners that directly contribute to improved patient outcomes, industry experts said. These insights were shared during a panel discussion titled “The Transformation of GCCs Towards Patient Impact” held as part of BioAsia. Shalini Pillay, Partner at KPMG, noted that the healthcare industry is facing significant challenges, including an ageing population, shortage of healthcare professionals, increasingly stringent regulations and pricing pressures. However, she emphasized that the advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is driving transformative changes across the sector.

Anand Jain, Vice President at Novo Nordisk, stated that the company’s India-based centers have matured to the point of making key strategic decisions at a global level. Shiv Kumar Padmanabhan, Managing Director of AstraZeneca India, highlighted that GCCs in India are playing a critical role in advancing cutting-edge therapies such as cell and gene treatments. He further explained that technologies like Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) are being used to demonstrate clinical trial processes to patients, helping reduce fear and improve awareness about treatment protocols. Manish Arora, AVP at Eli Lilly Services India, said that with the support of AI, the time required to analyze clinical trial results has been reduced from 30 weeks to just six weeks.

Srinivas Peddi, Senior Director at Becton Dickinson Technology Campus, pointed out that innovation ecosystems in Hyderabad, such as T-Hub and T-Works, have significantly accelerated prototype development timelines from five months to just a few days. Isha Juneja, Head of Digital GCC at Opella Healthcare, added that India-based GCCs are driving innovation in areas such as supply chain analytics, e-commerce and data analytics, further strengthening the country’s role in global healthcare transformation.