For decades, healthcare has been organized around buildings. Patients travelled to hospitals, systems optimized for beds, and value was measured in occupancy and procedures. That model is slowly dissolving. Across industries, value has moved from physical assets to platforms that manage journeys rather than transactions—and healthcare is now following that path.

Hospitals will remain essential—but they will no longer be sufficient.

Globally, the fastest-growing healthcare organizations are no longer standalone hospitals. They are platforms that integrate clinics, diagnostics, telemedicine, pharmacies, hospitals, and home care into a single patient ecosystem. The reason is simple: platforms capture the entire patient journey, not just one episode of care.

As a McKinsey report on healthcare transformation notes, “The future of healthcare delivery lies in integrated, digitally enabled care pathways that extend far beyond hospital walls.”¹

From Episodes to Journeys

Traditional hospitals are optimized for events—a surgery, an admission, a delivery, an ICU stay. Platforms are optimized for continuity—prevention, diagnosis, treatment, recovery, monitoring, and repeat engagement.

This distinction matters economically. Most healthcare spending and decision-making happens outside hospitals: outpatient visits, diagnostics, medicines, chronic disease management, and home care. Platforms are designed to sit at this intersection.

Internationally, organizations like Kaiser Permanente have demonstrated that tightly integrated delivery models improve outcomes while controlling costs by aligning incentives across the continuum. Kaiser’s strength is not its hospitals alone, but its unified system of primary care, diagnostics, pharmacies, hospitals, and digital health records operating as one platform.²

A former US health policy advisor captured this shift succinctly: “Hospitals save lives. Platforms manage health.”

Why Platforms Scale Faster

Platform healthcare models scale faster for three structural reasons.  

To begin with, they gain from network effects. Adding a new clinic, lab, doctor, or home-care partner to the ecosystem makes it more appealing to both patients and payers. 

Second, platforms don’t need a lot of assets to grow. Hospitals have to spend a lot of money on each new bed, but platforms can reach more people digitally through teleconsultations, remote monitoring, and distributed care delivery. BCG says that digital-first care models minimize extra costs while making care more available, especially in new markets.³ 

Third, platforms create data continuity. When diagnostics, prescriptions, follow-ups, and admissions are all in the same system, the data builds up into useful information. This makes it possible to do things like preventive care, standardized treatment, and population health management, which are hard for hospitals that are on their own to do. 

As Eric Topol writes in Deep Medicine, “The real power of digital health is not technology—it is longitudinal data connected to care.”⁴

India: A Market Ripe for Platforms

India represents one of the strongest platform opportunities globally. The healthcare system is fragmented, outpatient-heavy, and increasingly digital-savvy. According to NITI Aayog, over 60% of healthcare spending in India occurs in outpatient settings, largely outside hospitals.⁵

This creates space for integrated models. Indian groups such as Apollo Hospitals have already moved beyond hospital-centricity into diagnostics, pharmacies, telemedicine, and chronic care management. Similarly, Tata 1mg demonstrates how pharmacy, diagnostics, and digital consultation can converge into a consumer health platform.

The lesson is strategic, not technological. Hospitals that see themselves only as buildings risk becoming interchangeable facilities. Hospitals that see themselves as ecosystem orchestrators become brands.

An Indian healthcare entrepreneur recently summarized this shift well: “In the next decade, patients will remember platforms, not pin codes.”

Hospitals as Anchors, Not Islands

Importantly, this transition does not diminish hospitals—it repositions them. In platform models, hospitals become anchors for complex care, high-acuity services, and clinical credibility. But value creation increasingly occurs through integration with diagnostics, primary care, digital touchpoints, and home-based services.

WHO’s framework on integrated people-centred health services emphasizes that health systems must be organized around patient needs, not institutional silos.⁶ Platforms operationalize this principle at scale.

The Strategic Choice Ahead

For hospital leaders, the choice is no longer whether platforms will emerge, but who will own the patient relationship. Hospitals that build or participate in ecosystems will define care pathways. Hospitals that remain isolated will be relegated to transactional service providers.

To paraphrase a widely cited platform insight from technology strategy: “Platforms don’t replace assets—they redefine who controls demand.”

In healthcare, demand control is the difference between being a destination and being a commodity.


Dr. Prahlada N.B
MBBS (JJMMC), MS (PGIMER, Chandigarh). 
MBA in Healthcare & Hospital Management (BITS, Pilani), 
Postgraduate Certificate in Technology Leadership and Innovation (MIT, USA)
Executive Programme in Strategic Management (IIM, Lucknow)
Senior Management Programme in Healthcare Management (IIM, Kozhikode)
Advanced Certificate in AI for Digital Health and Imaging Program (IISc, Bengaluru)

Senior Professor and former Head, 
Department of ENT-Head & Neck Surgery, Skull Base Surgery, Cochlear Implant Surgery. 
Basaveshwara Medical College & Hospital, Chitradurga, Karnataka, India. 

My Vision: I don’t want to be a genius.  I want to be a person with a bundle of experience. 

My Mission: Help others achieve their life’s objectives in my presence or absence!

My Values:  Creating value for others. 


References:

1. McKinsey & Company. The future of healthcare delivery. McKinsey Global Institute; 2020.
2. Porter ME, Lee TH. The strategy that will fix healthcare. Harvard Business Review. 2013;91(10):50–70.
3. Boston Consulting Group. Digital transformation in healthcare: Platforms and ecosystems. BCG Report; 2021.
4. Topol E. Deep Medicine: How Artificial Intelligence Can Make Healthcare Human Again. New York: Basic Books; 2019.
5. NITI Aayog. Health systems for a new India: Building blocks. Government of India; 2019.
6. World Health Organization. Framework on integrated, people-centred health services. WHO; 2016.

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