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Aarthi Scans & Labs' goal is to bring high-quality diagnostics at affordable prices to everyone across India.
Access to care

A healthcare model for accessible diagnostics across India

A diagnostics center in India aims to offer high-quality diagnostics at affordable prices.
Andrea Lutz
Published on January 10, 2025

An engineer from rural India turned his vision of accessible healthcare into a trusted diagnostic network. Today, Aarthi Scans & Labs brings high-quality diagnostics at affordable prices to everyone across India. This is how it can be done – with the support of a strong medtech partner.   

India’s vast size poses significant challenges to delivering quality healthcare, particularly in smaller and remote cities. Residents in these areas often travel for hours to access reliable medical services. Aarthi Prasanna, MD, daughter of the founder of Aarthi Scans & Labs, recalls: “My dad’s vision has been to bring quality diagnostic services closer to patients in underserved regions, reducing the need for long travel.” Today, Aarthi Scans & Labs specializes in advanced imaging and pathology services, with 70 centers offering magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), computed tomography (CT), ultrasound, and lab tests.
“The cost of diagnosing a disease should never make treatment unaffordable.” This guiding principle inspired V. Govindarajan to establish Aarthi Scans & Labs in the year 2000. He named the company after his daughter, starting with a single X-ray machine in 1988—and founded a family legacy. In 2000, they started offering MRI services, and today the company provides its services 24/7, caring for over 8,000 patients every day.”
Aarthi Prasanna now serves as one of the company’s directors alongside her husband, Prasanna Vignesh, MD, and her brother, Arunkumar Govindarajan, MD. To fulfill their mission, the three experienced radiologists employ sustainable business strategies such as standardization, lean management, and frugality, making sure healthcare remains accessible to all.

Five facts about sustainable business strategies

Radiologists in the radiology hub at Aarthi Scans & Labs.
Aarthi Scans & Labs is solely focused on the diagnostics sector, with no investments in any other areas.

How a sustainable business strategy drives rapid expansion and affordability

What sets Aarthi Scans & Labs apart from many other labs—and is likely a key factor in its rapid expansion—is the company’s strict one-vendor policy. This approach provides for consistency through standardization, delivering significant impact. For the family business, supplier loyalty provides three key benefits: streamlined workflows, unified training, and minimal downtime.

Streamlined workflows allow access to care

From the beginning, the Aarthi Scans & Labs centers have streamlined care by combining lab tests and imaging under one roof, making sure critically ill patients don’t need to visit multiple locations. Today, the team handles a broad variety of complex and specialized procedures. An advanced imaging solution with a standardized user interface helps staff tackle their specific clinical setup and tasks and enables consistent results for a diverse patient mix.

Standardization provides for uniform imaging and rapid reporting

A standardized remote interface allows uniform protocols and settings across different sites, driving consistent, expert-guided processes. This reduces user-related errors and variability, enhancing the consistency of image acquisition. This is critical for accurate diagnosis and effective treatment planning, especially when every minute counts.

Unified training for fast onboarding

Standardized protocols enable efficient staff training. A unified interface accelerates onboarding of new staff by using standardized processes, allowing team members to apply their skills universally across different sites after being trained on a single system. This enhances overall proficiency and supports rapid scalability. As Prasanna Vignesh explains: “We often recruit staff from rural backgrounds and train them to become managers. Through standardization, we maintain a consistent training program, and most of the time, they end up working in their own neighborhoods.”

The trained members of staff are often local here in the Kolathur center.

Reduced downtime for continuous service

Arunkumar Govindarajan: “Our vision is to provide affordable diagnostics, and Siemens Healthineers plays a crucial role in making that happen. The machines we purchase need to last, and our first MRI, bought 22 years ago, is still running. They’ve helped us minimize downtime, allowing uninterrupted service. The longer these machines operate, the more patients we can serve, keeping costs down for everyone.”

A patient receives an MRI exam at A

India’s systemic healthcare challenges

India’s healthcare system, which is primarily private, faces multiple challenges from underfunded public services—especially in rural areas [1]. Many regions lack qualified professionals, which delays diagnoses and limits access to preventive care. Residents of smaller or remote cities face hurdles like long distances to diagnostic centers, appointment shortages, and overcrowding. With only 11 to 15 percent of the population insured, and many conditions excluded, most Indians pay out-of-pocket for healthcare services. This financial burden drives 50 to 60 million people into poverty annually [2], highlighting systemic inequities.

Expanding affordable healthcare to underserved regions

Currently, Aarthi Scans & Labs prioritizes metro cities with high demand. It has installed ten MRI scanners each in major urban centers such as Chennai, Bangalore, Mumbai, and Hyderabad. This strategy has helped fuel the company’s expansion to 70 branches across ten states. However, Aarthi Scans & Labs has also established branches in smaller towns like Tenkasi, Rajapalayam, and Kovilpatti, making diagnostics more accessible to these communities.

The corporate office is in Vadapalani, Chennai.
The corporate office is in Vadapalani, Chennai.

The training program at Aarthi Scans and Labs. Watch the video. 

By Andrea Lutz
Andrea Lutz is a journalist and business trainer specialized on medical topics, technology, and healthcare IT. She lives in Nuremberg, Germany.

  1. [1] Angell BJ, Prinja S, Gupt A, Jha V, Jan S. The Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana and the path to universal health coverage in India: Overcoming the challenges of stewardship and governance. PLoS Med. 2019;16(3): e1002759. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1002759. 

  2. [2] ebd.

  3. 1 The products/features and/or service offerings (mentioned herein) are not commercially available in all countries and/or for all modalities. Their future availability cannot be guaranteed. Please contact your local Siemens Healthineers organization for further details.

  4. 2 The statements by Siemens Healthineers customers described herein are based on results that were achieved in the customer’s unique setting. Since there is no “typical” hospital and many variables exist (e.g., hospital size, case mix, level of IT adoption) there can be no guarantee that other customers will achieve the same results.