Poised for a big leap ahead

BANGALORE: The emergence of sophisticated diagnostic and imaging devices has helped the medical fraternity render superior treatment to patients across the world.
The global healthcare informatics — the application of IT to facilitate delivery of multiple healthcare services — is expected to grow from $61 billion to $98 billion by 2005.
India is also upbeat about the healthcare informatics.Today many Indian healthcare IT providers are working with pharma majors and other medical agencies to tap the global bio-informatics market, says a Frost & Sullivan report. Globally, the real challenge lies in integrating the data that spread across the Hospital Information Systems (HIS) or the Electronic Medical Records (EMR) of healthcare companies.
According to industry experts, unlike any other vertical that leverages IT for business prospects, the healthcare industry poses challenges in the ‘‘man-machine-software’’ integration process. Healthcare standards like Health Level Seven (HL-7), that enable seamless communication at integration between provider and insurance networks with all security at confidentiality, has been effective in tackling integration issues.
Handling integration problems are difficult in India. ‘‘There is a huge lacuna in the integration of information pertaining to the various stages involved in healthcare delivery and payment,’’ says Covansys India CEO K. Subrahmaniam.
So, the Indian healthcare IT providers are expected to address various technology challenges including: Integration of legacy systems and other home grown applications, understanding the use of unstructured data, business intelligence and understanding government regulations and comply with them, opines Saji Salam chairman of HL-7.
Prashanth Prakash of Netcraft, a healthcare IT solutions firm, says that the global healthcare industry is continuously challenged for achieving higher productivity at better service levels. The industry is undergoing a transformation, focusing on improving internal operations, reducing administrative and clinical costs, and becoming more customer\patient focused.
Indian heathcare providers and insurance firms are focusing to be patient-centric. There is huge amount of data exchange happening between organisations and multiple networks of healthcare providers.