Over 100 pa­tients from T&T, in­clud­ing chil­dren have ben­e­fit­ted from the med­ical tech­nol­o­gy and case-by-case pay­ment plans that are be­ing of­fered by the Apol­lo Hos­pi­tals, which is based in In­dia.

Apol­lo’s ter­ri­to­ry lead for North Amer­i­ca, Latin Amer­i­ca, and Caribbean re­gion, Matthew Sam­my, in an in­ter­view with Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian, said treat­ments that are not avail­able in Trinidad, such as liv­er trans­plants, and com­plex heart surg­eries are done at the hos­pi­tal, and it works through the Chil­dren’s Life Fund.

Sam­my in­di­cat­ed that the hos­pi­tal had that re­la­tion­ship for al­most a decade with the T&T gov­ern­ment.  

“The hos­pi­tal has sup­port­ed pa­tients from Guyana, Ja­maica, Bar­ba­dos, Ba­hamas, you name it.  We’ve had many health min­is­ters who have come to see ex­act­ly what we of­fer. We even have non-in­va­sive surgery for brain tu­mors, where treat­ment can be done in as lit­tle as half an hour in one sit­ting to shrink and re­duce brain tu­mors, cur­ing pa­tients. So, what we’ve been able to do, apart from hav­ing all those med­ical tech­nolo­gies, is work with lo­cal in­sur­ers. These pro­ce­dures can cost 50–70 per cent less than in the US or Eu­rope, with­out com­pro­mis­ing on qual­i­ty or safe­ty, ” Sam­my ex­plained.

Sam­my, who is a Trinida­di­an, not­ed that health­care provider has worked with in­sur­ers such as Guardian Life, Sagi­cor, Mar­itime, Bea­con, M&M In­sur­ance, to of­fer af­ford­able care for pa­tients.

“We do un­der­stand the chal­lenges that are faced by lo­cals with re­spect to the for­eign ex­change short­age. What we’ve been able to do is, once the pa­tients have the TT equiv­a­lent, we’ve been able to have the treat­ment done while the amount is held in es­crow un­til the banks have the avail­abil­i­ty and al­lo­ca­tion to treat the pa­tients.  

“For Apol­lo, our mantra is it’s eas­i­er to pay a debt, than to bring some­body back from death. The hos­pi­tal has the hu­man side of med­i­cine cov­ered and works with our pa­tients and puts a pay­ment plan in place,” he dis­closed.

How­ev­er, he did out­line that not all pa­tients are go­ing to have a pay­ment plan, but it’s go­ing to be on a case-by-case ba­sis and the com­pa­ny al­ways look at ways to save the life of a pa­tient.

“You’ll find that many fa­cil­i­ties, in­clud­ing in the US, many of them re­ject pa­tients be­cause they say it’s too risky and it will af­fect their sta­tis­tics, their mor­tal­i­ty, and mor­bid­i­ty. The hos­pi­tals have what is called QAC, which is the acronym for qual­i­ty, af­ford­abil­i­ty, and con­ve­nience. So you’re go­ing to get the best in world-class care be­cause we are GCA ac­cred­it­ed, which is the high­est US ac­cred­i­ta­tion that hos­pi­tals can get. We have the af­ford­abil­i­ty be­cause when com­pared to oth­er ter­ri­to­ries, in­clud­ing the US, we are a frac­tion of the cost,” he de­tailed.

Sam­my high­light­ed that some­times the hos­pi­tal com­pa­ny of­fers ser­vices at 10 per cent of the cost of get­ting sim­i­lar treat­ment in the US, but that it is im­por­tant to note that every physi­cian is very flu­ent in Eng­lish and there’s noth­ing lost in trans­la­tion.

“Our Caribbean pa­tients, our Trinida­di­an pa­tients, they can speak to their doc­tors and un­der­stand clear­ly what they are say­ing, or doc­tors take their time with them, and all med­ical re­ports are giv­en in Eng­lish.  All dis­charge sum­maries are giv­en in Eng­lish. And what we do, we can send the re­ports back to their lo­cal doc­tors at home be­fore they even get back to Trinidad.” he stat­ed.

Ro­bot­ics

Speak­ing about the hos­pi­tal’s jour­ney in­to ro­bot­ics, Sam­my said it be­gan in 2011, when it launched its flag­ship ro­bot­ic surgery pro­gramme at Apol­lo Hos­pi­tals Chen­nai. Since then, the in­sti­tu­tion has es­tab­lished one of the largest and most com­pre­hen­sive mul­ti­spe­cial­ty ro­bot­ic surgery pro­grammes in In­dia hav­ing per­formed over 6,000 ro­bot­ic pro­ce­dures to date across its lead­ing hos­pi­tals.  

These, he said, in­clude com­plex surg­eries in spe­cial­ties such as urol­o­gy, car­diac sci­ences, gy­ne­col­o­gy, or­thopaedics and on­col­o­gy. Ro­bot­ic sys­tems like the Da Vin­ci Sur­gi­cal Sys­tem have al­lowed Apol­lo’s clin­i­cal teams to de­liv­er safer, more pre­cise, and min­i­mal­ly in­va­sive out­comes — lead­ing to short­er re­cov­ery times and im­proved pa­tient sat­is­fac­tion.

“In ad­di­tion to sur­gi­cal ro­bot­ics, Apol­lo has made sig­nif­i­cant in­vest­ments in Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence (AI) and dig­i­tal health so­lu­tions. Over the last two years, a sub­stan­tial por­tion of the group’s dig­i­tal health­care bud­get has been ded­i­cat­ed to en­hanc­ing AI-dri­ven screen­ing and pre­ven­tive care tools. These sys­tems are be­ing used to iden­ti­fy high-risk in­di­vid­u­als, sup­port ear­ly di­ag­no­sis, and tai­lor well­ness strate­gies — ul­ti­mate­ly shift­ing the fo­cus from ill­ness treat­ment to proac­tive health man­age­ment,” Sam­my said.

The hos­pi­tal chain hopes that the use of such AI tools will help low­er nurs­es’ work­load as it tack­les a 25 per cent at­tri­tion rate among nurs­es, which it ex­pects to in­crease to 30 per cent by the end of fis­cal 2025, said Sam­my.

Al­so, he said Apol­lo is al­so work­ing on an AI-pow­ered sys­tem to as­sist clin­i­cians in pre­scrib­ing the most ef­fec­tive an­tibi­otics, en­hanc­ing treat­ment ac­cu­ra­cy and help­ing com­bat the glob­al chal­lenge of an­timi­cro­bial re­sis­tance. Apol­lo has al­so strength­ened its dig­i­tal back­bone with in­te­grat­ed elec­tron­ic med­ical records, smart dis­charge sys­tems, and mo­bile-first pa­tient en­gage­ment plat­forms to stream­line op­er­a­tions and im­prove con­ti­nu­ity of care.

Fur­ther­more, Sam­my not­ed that the adop­tion of ad­vanced tech­nol­o­gy re­quires a sig­nif­i­cant cap­i­tal out­lay; how­ev­er, Apol­lo has re­mained stead­fast in its com­mit­ment to in­no­va­tion.

 “While cost re­mains a fac­tor, it has not de­terred Apol­lo’s pace in in­te­grat­ing AI and ro­bot­ics in­to main­stream clin­i­cal prac­tice — a tes­ta­ment to its long-term be­lief in tech­nol­o­gy-dri­ven health­care trans­for­ma­tion.”

In terms of fi­nan­cial per­for­mance, he in­di­cat­ed Apol­lo Hos­pi­tals re­port­ed a ro­bust first quar­ter in 2025, with rev­enues touch­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$610 mil­lion and net prof­its reach­ing US$36.6 mil­lion, re­flect­ing a 20 per cent year-on-year growth. These num­bers un­der­score not on­ly the scale of op­er­a­tions but al­so the trust placed in Apol­lo by do­mes­tic and in­ter­na­tion­al pa­tients alike.

Sam­my al­so high­light­ed that there is an enor­mous un­tapped po­ten­tial to strength­en med­ical tourism be­tween In­dia and T&T fur­ther.  

“Apol­lo Hos­pi­tals would be pleased to en­gage in dis­cus­sions with the In­di­an High Com­mis­sion in T&T and the coun­try’s Min­istry of Trade to ex­plore col­lab­o­ra­tive strate­gies to pro­mote health­care trav­el. Such part­ner­ships can am­pli­fy aware­ness, sim­pli­fy re­fer­ral path­ways, and en­sure pa­tients can ac­cess care seam­less­ly and con­fi­dent­ly.”