It Solutions for Healthcare in India

With 80% of the IT companies in India focusing solely on Metros or on dollar revenues with an abysmal domestic participation, there are not many reliable vendors to supply and support IT solutions to provide solutions in these markets.

Currently software is ‘made in India’ but it is not ‘made for India’. The software industry will have to recognise the difference between the Indian market and the global market and that will be a big leap for revenue recognition. The verticals will be the same even in the Indian market (Banking/ Finance, Retail etc.). The only difference is going to be the cultural difference and Indian companies are in much better position to study and implement it. That said foreign players are far ahead in understanding the Indian market and catering to a large portion of market when compared to Indian players

Healthcare service providers

Healthcare informatics comprises of three segments.

1. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)

2. Picture Archival and Retrieval System (PACS)

3. Electronic Medical Records (EMR)

Most of the software vendors provide services or solutions rather than products resulting in non standard practices. While some excel in one area, they fail in the other.

Typical hospital information systems (HMS) would comprise of routine applications for day to day operations such as billing, inventory control, patient tracking, admissions, discharges and statistics.

Industry requirements for IT healthcare

With the advent of IRDA, Nearly 10% of all billing systems for health care are routed through TPA / insurance providers that has lead to substantial paperwork for hospitals. There are 25 registered TPA providers according to IRDA sources.

New hospitals being established in all small cities resulting in the need to modernise and introduce mature processes and management controls.

Strengths

• Higher spending power among middle class population to move to private hospitals

• Tier 2 / 3 cities are price sensitive markets...