|
The Services Export Promotion Council (SEPC) India and the Association of Healthcare Providers (AHPI) India successfully held its first meeting recently on creating an accreditation programme for Wellness Centers and Medical Value Travel Facilitators (MVTF). The discussion focused on building credible standards, quality benchmarks, and global trust to further strengthen India’s medical value travel ecosystem, according to officials associated with the development.
“This is a step forward towards structured, globally aligned wellness and healthcare services,” said Anil Jauhri, former CEO, National Accreditation Board for Certification Bodies (NABCB).
He further added, “When Ayush Quality Mark criteria were developed for Wellness Centres and MVTF under my chairmanship, it was recognized that there is no accreditation or certification program for these two services even though there are International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standards available for both, whereas hospitals were well covered under accreditation of various agencies both Indian and foreign. The SEPC India has now joined hands with the AHPI (India)) to develop a certification program for both these services based on available ISO standards covering entire healthcare domain going beyond Ayush sector.”
Jauhri further informed that SEPC has also set up an expert group to develop the programs so that wellness centres and MVTF can formally get certified to global standards, thus, enhancing India's standing in world market and promoting wellness tourism. The program can potentially also expand overseas in due course given the importance of health and wellness in any country's economy and absence of such programmes.
Experts have also been emphasizing that there is a need to develop certification standards for wellness centres aligned with global standards to position India as a premier wellness destination. The Ayush Quality Mark programme, launched by the Prime Minister to showcase India’s Ayush sector globally, covers wellness centres among other products and services.
It is learnt that there is a gap in the ecosystem of Ayush healthcare in India that there is little or no certification of wellness centres nor any standards prescribed.
The ISO prescribes two international standards – ISO 17679 for Wellness Spas and ISO 21426 for what are called Medical Spas which are supervised by clinicians. Neither of them has gained any traction. The Medical Spa standards focus on natural healing and is not even suitable for Ayush sector.
Anil Jauhri, chair of the Working Group set up by the Ministry of Ayush said that ISO 21426 was modified to suit Ayush sector needs by first defining what an Ayush Wellness Centre meant that it would have both clinical and fitness or rejuvenation components and then prescribing requirements suitable for Ayush sector. To facilitate certification or accreditation, it also developed both certification and accreditation procedures which are, today, available in the public domain. The modified standard has also been submitted to the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) with a request to develop an ISO standard through the ISO committee on Ayurveda and Yoga for wellness centres.
|