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The Indian health care sector will double its size to US$ 100 billion by 2015 from the present US$ 50 billion. However, the government’s contribution on health care is minimal whereas Indian households spend a disproportionate share of their consumption expenditure on health care. The National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) intends to increase the public expenditure on health from 1.1 per cent of GDP to 2–3 per cent of GDP by 2011. This increased funding through the NRHM should be supplemented by efforts to improve efficiency in resource utilization. Health economics is increasingly recognized as a discipline that has much to offer in addressing these issues. However, the information about capacity building initiatives in terms of teaching and training in the field of health economics in India is limited. This article attempts to address this knowledge gap through a systematic research by identifying various institutions offering courses in health economics across India, their intake capacity, areas of specialization and accreditation standards. The article also attempts to estimate the demand for professionals having expertise in health economics and intends to stimulate the discussion around pertinent issues around need and demand mismatch. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Industrial growth in India has resulted in increased employment opportunities, thereby inflating the size of the workforce engaged in both organized and unorganized sectors. This workforce is exposed to various occupational factors at workplace and hence is susceptible to occupational diseases, which requires trained occupational health manpower. The present study is undertaken to estimate the need and supply gap of occupational health manpower, based on present regulations. The total workforce in the organized sector in India is 26.92 million. There are 254,951 working registered industrial factories in India, with about 11.16 million workers. These factories have employed 6953 factory medical officers (FMOs) and 2308 safety officers (SOs). Hence, for 26.92 million of total workforce engaged in organized sector, we would require a total of 16,728 FMOs and 5619 SOs, thereby estimating the deficit of 58% for FMOs and 59% for SOs based on current ratio of employment. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Pharmaceutical management is a cross cutting domain across health care systems and the pharmaceutical industry. Also, higher education in pharmaceuticals lies at cross-roads between health and technical education. This has created enormous opportunities for developing synergistic and symbiotic relationships between academic institutions and the pharmaceutical industry for developing human resource trained in various domains of the pharmaceutical. However, there is limited information and data regarding educational institutions offering training in pharmaceuticals as well as supply of human resources trained in pharmaceuticals. This research article intends to fill the above mentioned research gap and stimulate discussion around various pertinent issues like regulation, accreditation and benchmarking of various educational programmes in pharmaceutical management. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The healthcare industry in India caters to a large population, and the sector is expected to continue growing close to previously projected rates of 10 to 12 per cent. The administrative and management complexities of a large organisation like a hospital need the frequency matching and fine-tuning of all the associated staff with the hierarchy. A qualified man-agement graduate specially trained to work within the health sector would have an advantage in the inter-disciplinary interactions, effective and efficient management of the available resources, coordination along the hierarchy, logistics and supply-chain related issues along with many other issues that are required in a hospital. It is evident that there is a huge backlog of trained hospital managers and administrators to work for hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, health insurance and third-party administration and other health care provider organisations. Despite having a diverse range of options to choose the educational institutions for such managerial courses, there is still a gap between the supply and the demand side, as no exhaustive list of program related data from these institutes is available till date. This article analyses the demand and supply issues surrounding courses offering hospital management in India, thereby attempting to highlight the current mismatch. A systematic, predefined approach was used to collect and assemble the data. All the institutes offering such courses were contacted for detailed infor-mation. Fifty one institutes have been identified which annually produce around 2500 qualified professionals to work in the domain of hospital management. The article also discusses the demand analysis where these prospective students can be placed. To estimate these numbers, various stakeholders of the hospital industry were consulted and desk reviews were performed. An estimated 21,750 professionals would be required based upon the country’s present status, which reflects the dearth in their workforce capacity. The findings could be adapted for future health work force planning in the country. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]