“There is a dearth of good healthcare managers in the corporate sector,” says Dr (Major) Sayed Moulana, Director of Quality, MFine & an alumnus of AMPH Founding Class at ISB.
A clinician-turned management professional, Sayed served five years in the Indian Army, treating patients, before moving to the corporate sector. “I was always passionate about serving the armed forces and when the opportunity beckoned, I jumped at it,” he says. However, after his father’s demise, Syed returned to support his mother. “Most of my postings were at remote (hard) areas. When I lost my father, I decided to hang my boots.”
Sayed had joined the Army right after his BDS. After his discharge from the service, he worked in Saudi Arabia for a couple of years before returning to India. All these years, he had been a pure clinician. But going further, he wanted to learn the management of healthcare businesses. He completed his PG Diploma in oral implantology from the University at Buffalo. At this juncture, he decided to transform himself completely from being a clinician to an administrator/management role. “I had made up my mind but for this kind of a transformation, I needed to learn first. I started looking for programmes in India, and like a godsend blessing, I heard that ISB was launching a healthcare management programme. Without any further ado, I applied.”
Sayed was part of the founding cohort of the AMPH at ISB. “Getting admission into ISB was like a dream come true. What was even better was the fact that AMPH was a modular programme. I could study without leaving my job,” he says.
At ISB, Sayed’s perspective towards businesses changed completely. “I learnt a great deal about marketing, leadership and operations. We as doctors think sales is marketing! The AMPH courses taught me how to streamline the operational processes and get the best out of them, build effective teams, acquire customers, etc. One of the most critical takeaways from the programme was the knowledge of business negotiations. ISB taught me how to get into the mind of the buyer.”
Talking about the biggest impact that ISB has had on his career, Sayed says, “Healthcare IT as a separate course in the programme helped me a lot. Whatever processes and product improvisation I do at MFine today is an outcome of the learnings from this course. I am so happy to share that when the government announced its first-ever guidelines on telemedicine during the pandemic, we were already 99-percent compliant. Today, we are providing quality healthcare to remotest nooks in India, ranging from Jammu & Kashmir to Kerala and even Andaman. We haven’t marketed or advertised but we have still been able to reach these places.”
On the occasion of Doctor’s Day, Sayed says, “The pandemic has opened our eyes and helped us see how the real need of quality healthcare is for people living in rural and Tier-3 places. We must leverage technology to reach out to these people and cater the best of quality care to them.”