The UK government denied Friday that British patients would be sent to India for treatment as former Labour health secretary Patricia Hewitt revealed that several National Health Service trusts are keen to do business with India.
The NHS faces a huge funding gap despite no cuts in UK government spending on health. The gap is projected to be as large as £30 billion by 2020.
India’s healthcare market may be worth £110 billion by 2017.
Ms Hewitt, who heads the UK India Business Council, said in an interview quoted by The Independent that between 10 and 20 NHS trusts are in talks with Indian health service providers and “half-a-dozen to a dozen” should reach an agreement by 2015 to boost income by sharing expertise.
The negotiations are linked to proposal of an exchange programme for doctors — UK doctors and dentists visiting India to work in hospitals there and Indian doctors, who are less expensive, to work in the UK in the National Health Service.
In an interview with Health Service Journal, Ms Hewitt said: “Our ambition is to get as many (NHS trusts, health companies and charities) there as we can.”
“I would certainly hope by 2015 we will be able to say... here is what they are doing and selling and here are the benefits that are accruing both to Britain and to India.”
Britain’s health ministry said, however, that it had “no intention to send National Health Service patients to India for treatment”.