Pretam Gharat is a dentist by profession and as he likes to describe himself, an entrepreneur by passion; and a techie by birth. He completed his Bachelors in Dental Surgery in Mumbai in 2003 and launched his Dental Surgery at 23. From then on, there’s been no looking back. In 2008, he moved to London to pursue his M.Sc. from one of the world’s top three ranked universities, University College London. Pretam Gharat completed his M.Sc.
He and his wife Neishaa Gharat, were recently invited to be on panel with business leaders to speak on disruptive innovations in business.
Dr Pretam and Neishaa were the panelists at the event which was a part of the Global Indian Excellence Awards in the Church House, Westminister, London. The panel was headed by a leading educationist who was surprised, yet in complete agreement when Dr Pretam Gharat posed the question “We don’t even know what we are training our young children for? What skills do they need for the future? What are we going to teach young dentists?” Today, we are training dentists to perform fillings, perform dental implant procedures. But as he says, the future of dentistry promises the use of stem cells to grow teeth in a petri dish. Why would we need to learn what we teach young dentists today?
Speaking about the panel Richard Heald OBE, CEO of the UKIBC commented, “I was very interested in the comments you made on the panel about training for the future.
How can you anticipate “known unknowns”? The same is true in many professions.”
Dr Pretam Gharat spoke about the need for a disruptive innovation in healthcare, which has on a large scale lacked much of this sort of shake up. As he commented, we are in a healthcare crisis at the moment. With Diabetes and Heart disease (labelled as lifestyle diseases) costing over 85% of the total healthcare costs in most economies, the need for a disruptive innovation is all the more critical. These are preventable diseases and the fact that a great economy like India is the world capital of Diabetes, necessitates a big change. He mentioned that 32 out of the 35 developed economies had a state based healthcare system. Only the sickest 5% of the population spent over 50% of the healthcare budget is in itself alarming.
With his expertise in Dental Public Health, Dr Gharat spoke about how modern innovations in healthcare are going to completely change our perceptions treatment modalities in a revolutionary way. When asked what was that he saw as the future of healthcare, Dr Pretam Gharat referred to Prof Yuval Noah Harari and said, ‘We are definitely aiming for immortality next. We have almost come to point where we would be able to repair body parts or fix them and thereby, see bionic humans walking amongst us.” Prof. Yuval Noah Harari is the bestselling author of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, and 21 Lessons for the 21st Century.
Dr Pretam Gharat has certainly questioned modern healthcare “What are we going to teach young dentists?”
Dr Pretam Gharat
B.D.S. M.Sc. D.P.H.(Lon.)
D.D.P.H. (R.C.S., Eng.)
M.J.D.F. (R.C.S., Eng.)
F.R.S.P.H.
Trained in Smile Design, Full mouth Oral Rehabilitation and Occlusion
Certified Dental Implants, Nobel Biocare all-on-4 Implants, Advanced Fast Braces®
Invisalign®, Cfast, Inman Aligners, Clear Aligners and Cerinate Lumineers®
Advanced Certification Dermal Fillers and Botulinum toxin in facial aesthetics
www.drpretam.com