Ardra Kurien is chief executive of the 250-bed Unico Hospitals on Green Road in Dhaka. In its first year of operations, the hospital treated more than 10,000 patients. In an interview with Bonik Barta, she discussed the hospital’s first-year performance, its specialist services and plans to establish a nursing college. The interview was conducted by Susmita Hossain.
Congratulations on completing your first year of operations. Looking back, how would you describe Unico Hospitals’ journey and its biggest achievements during this initial year?
This first year has been exceptionally eventful. We’ve grown month by month, and it has been a deeply rewarding experience for us. Our patients come to us with high expectations, and we constantly strive to fulfil them.
We are located on Green Road, which is essentially Dhaka city’s primary healthcare hub, surrounded by numerous established institutions. Yet in just one year, people have recognised our service, connected with our approach and placed their trust in us. More than 10,000 people have sought care at our hospital over the past year, and we hope every one of them left in better health and spirits.
How has the response from patients been, and what key lessons have you learned operating in Bangladesh?
When patients hear there’s an Indian management element, they sometimes assume we employ foreign doctors. In reality, Rajagiri Hospital in Kerala serves as our technical consultant for facility planning and equipment. While a few of us in leadership hail from Kerala, the rest of our team is Bangladeshi. I’m immensely proud to say that our Bangladeshi doctors are exceptionally skilled, compassionate and committed.
One key insight we’ve gained is that healthcare in Dhaka operates at an extremely demanding pace. Patients frequently mention that at many facilities, doctors rarely have the time to sit and listen. Here, we actively encourage our doctors to dedicate sufficient time to every individual and make them the priority. Patients have found this patient-centric focus both refreshing and reassuring. Another piece of feedback I often receive concerns our housekeeping team — patients note that, unlike in many other settings, our staff consistently greet them warmly with a smile. That reflects the compassionate culture we are building.
What milestones are you most proud of since the hospital’s launch?
Above all, I’m most proud of the exceptional team we’ve assembled. The team is our greatest asset — spanning our clinical, technical and nursing personnel, as well as our management teams across finance, HR and supply chain. A doctor alone can’t deliver complete patient care; while clinical expertise is vital, the nursing staff and operational framework must be equally strong to make the patient’s experience seamless and comforting. We regard ourselves as a “family of caregivers,” and that’s what I take the greatest pride in.
Could you elaborate on the core healthcare services currently available at Unico Hospitals?
We are fortunate to have already launched highly specialised capabilities, such as minimally invasive cardiac surgery, which allows complex procedures to be performed through minimal incisions. We also regularly perform congenital cardiac corrections including ASD and VSD closures for paediatric patients. Our interventional cardiology department utilises advanced diagnostic and therapeutic procedures including intravascular ultrasound and coronary lithotripsy.
We also feature interventional neurology — a field still relatively rare in Bangladesh — backed by a top-tier radiology team utilising 128-slice CT scanners and high-field MRI units.
We perform virtually all radiology procedures and the vast majority of laboratory investigations in-house. In fact, our radiological infrastructure and expert team are significantly advanced compared to many existing facilities in the country.
Our home care initiative is quite distinct. It extends beyond routine blood sample collection or medication delivery; we dispatch a complete family medicine team — comprising doctors, nurses, and, where required, physiotherapists — directly to the patient’s home. This service is tailored for geriatric patients and senior citizens who face mobility challenges but require continuous monitoring and routine check-ups. We also integrate telemedicine, enabling them to consult with our super-specialists remotely whenever necessary.
Does Unico Hospitals adhere to international clinical protocols or frameworks that set it apart?
Absolutely. Our technical consulting partner, Rajagiri Hospital, holds JCI accreditation. Having personally managed healthcare operations within both JCI (Joint Commission International) and ACHSI (Australian Council on Healthcare Standards International) frameworks, I ensured that our facility layout, clinical workflows, and digital infrastructure — including our patient portal — were engineered around these rigorous global criteria from day one.
We operate a dedicated infection control department led by a clinical microbiologist and specialised infection control nurses who continuously audit all operational areas, including biomedical waste management. We enforce stringent personal protective equipment (PPE) protocols, strict hand hygiene standards and controlled visitor access to minimise transmission risks. Furthermore, we display educational signage in patient rooms encouraging patients to actively verify that attending nurses have sanitised their hands and donned clean gloves. By engaging patients in the process, we add an extra layer of safeguard against hospital-acquired infections.
Infrastructure readiness was factored into our architectural design from day one. Every single inpatient room is equipped with dedicated medical gas, oxygen and high-capacity electrical conduits, allowing any standard room to be converted into a fully functional ICU if needed. This ensures we are not solely reliant on our fixed ICU capacity.
Many Bangladeshi patients travel abroad, particularly to India, for treatment. How do you see Unico Hospitals contributing to reducing the need for overseas medical travel?
Patients seek medical care abroad primarily in search of a trustworthy, reliable environment. We are building that same level of trust domestically through an empathetic, patient-centric culture, unhurried consultant evaluations, and state-of-the-art medical equipment. For example, our 128-slice CT scanner represented the latest cutting-edge technology in the region when acquired. Clinically, our local expertise matches international standards; the primary gap historically has been in overall patient service. By focusing relentlessly on workforce training and institutional culture, we aim to deliver the exact calibre of service patients expect overseas.
What distinguishes Unico Hospitals from other institutions in the country?
Our primary focus is on elevated service quality and continuous internal professional development. We prioritise continuous learning because medical science evolves rapidly, and our workforce must stay ahead of global standards to offer patients optimal care. Beyond clinical expertise, we aim to deliver the “wow factor” associated with world-class facilities in places like Singapore — pristine corridors, flawless hygiene and a warm, responsive support staff. We view Unico as a sanctuary for total wellness and healing, not merely a treatment centre.
How large is your workforce at present? Do your medical and nursing teams undergo specialised, continuous professional development?
Our team currently stands at over 500 members. Of those, nearly 100 are medical doctors, encompassing senior consultants, specialists, registrars and resident medical officers. Within our first year, we’ve hosted international nursing workshops as well as national-level training for radiology and laboratory technologists.
Structured training and professional growth form a core pillar of our mission statement. Across all departments — whether medical, nursing or allied health — there’s zero compromise on standard operating procedures. We host internal symposiums, participate in global healthcare forums, and actively support our clinical staff in pursuing advanced overseas training. Parallelly, we run public health and preventive medicine campaigns; for instance, on World Brain Day, we introduced an educational mascot named “STRO” to simplify stroke symptom recognition using the FAST/STRO model (Smile, Talk, Raise arms, Observe).
Are there active institutional partnerships with Indian or other international medical centres for clinical exchange and capacity building?
Yes. Since our initial setup phase in 2022, we have maintained a close institutional partnership with Rajagiri Hospital in India. Our nursing leadership and clinical operations managers underwent immersive training on-site in Kerala, while senior nursing instructors from Rajagiri were stationed here in Dhaka for a full year to anchor our founding team’s onboarding. With cross-border mobility returning to normal, we are scaling up reciprocal exchanges — sending our specialists to India for advanced clinical observer-ships and hosting visiting Indian experts to conduct specialised procedural training for our local team.
What are your plans for Unico Hospitals over the next three to five years?
We currently operate with 250 beds, but we are actively expanding toward a 500-bed capacity. Looking further ahead, we aim to establish a “Nursing College” and a dedicated nursing training institute, as we see significant scope for elevating standards in bedside care. Additionally, we plan to scale our community outreach, particularly through our Unico Home Care service. Moving forward, we are also keenly focused on expanding our footprint in interventional radiology. We also intend to formally apply for international accreditations such as JCI or ACI within this year.