Devi Shetty's Narayana Hrudayalaya can perform heart surgery for US$800
Cardiac surgeon Devi Shetty's pre-fabricated facility in India performs about 30 operations a day, and poor are treated free
What if hospitals were run like a mix of Walmart and a low-cost airline? The result might be something like the chain of "no-frills" Narayana Hrudayalaya clinics in southern India.
Using prefabricated buildings, stripping out air-conditioning and training visitors to help with post-operative care, the group believes it can cut the cost of heart surgery to US$800.
"Today healthcare has got phenomenal services to offer. Almost every disease can be cured and if you can't cure patients, you can give them meaningful life," says company founder Devi Shetty, one of the world's most famous heart surgeons.
"But what percentage of the people of this planet can afford it? A hundred years after the first heart surgery, less than 10 per cent of the world's population can," he said in Bangalore.
Already famous for his "heart factory" in Bangalore, which does the highest number of cardiac operations in the world, the latest Narayana Hrudayalaya ("Temple of the Heart") projects are ultra low-cost facilities.
The first is a single-storey hospital in Mysore, two hours drive from Bangalore, which was built for about 400 million rupees (HK$57.7 million) in 10 months and recently opened its doors.