Metropolis Healthcare’s executive chairperson Ameera Shah told The Signal Brief that India has seen a sharp rise in preventive testing since the COVID-19 pandemic, with wellness services growing from under 2% of the company’s revenue before COVID to roughly 20% today. The shift, Shah said, reflects greater health awareness among consumers, wider adoption of home sample collection and digital services, and new companies pushing consumer-focused wellness products into the market.
Shah said three broad changes drove the trend: a move from illness-driven care to preventive testing, the normalization of home collection, and the adoption of technology. “Before that, 95% of healthcare was only illness-driven,” she said, adding that patients and doctors now expect report delivery and services that are “Uberized” like other tech apps.
The growth is concentrated in metros, Shah said. In smaller towns preventive care is more often an add-on-patients get bundled tests when they visit for illness-related checks-rather than driven by proactive health awareness. Demographically, interest in annual health checkups is strongest among people in their late 30s to around 60, with many beginning regular screening at about 35–38 years old.
Shah urged consumers to prioritise scientifically grounded tests and follow-up. She warned against jumping on expensive new offerings without Indian validation-using gut microbiome testing as an example. “The benchmarks that are there today in the world are for Americans, Europeans, not for Indians,” she said, noting differences in diet, water and environment mean foreign reference data can mislead. She also cautioned that predictive genomics and broad full-body CT or MRI screening are not yet mature or necessary for most people, and low-dose scans can miss small but significant findings.
On cost and employers’ role, Shah said falling test prices have expanded the market and corporate wellness perks and reimbursements are contributing to uptake. Looking ahead, she said the next wave of wellness will combine pathology data with wearable and lifestyle data to give an integrated, actionable health score-if that integration is done scientifically and responsibly.
Shah also warned about the perils of self-diagnosis using online tools and AI. “It can be a tool to understand, but it cannot be a tool for confirmatory diagnosis,” she said, urging patients to pick informed doctors, ask questions and act on test results. Metropolis, she added, offers consultations after wellness checkups to ensure patients understand and follow up on findings. The interview transcript was machine transcribed and reviewed; listeners are directed to the podcast audio for clarification.
Original Source: https://www.thecore.in/podcasts/tuesday-special-ameera-shah-on-indias-preventative-testing-boom-869211
Category:
Tags:
Publish Date: 2026-08-18 07:30:00
