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Can IT be the game changer for healthcare in India?

By Benny Thomas | Wednesday, 02 December 2009, 23:52 Hrs

Bangalore: Indian IT industry seems to have found a new 'golden egg' in the U.S., following Barack Obama's announcement of the latest healthcare reforms to be primarily driven by technology adoption. Though, this is good news for the Indian IT sector, the question that needs to be pondered upon is, when will India be the goose? In other words when will Indian healthcare turn towards more IT adoption benefiting not only the industry, but also the entire country?

It is a known fact that good healthcare is essential for any country. Today, with India being home to more than a billion people, it is high time that the administrators focused more on healthcare. "Before IT can be implemented in the Indian healthcare space, the basic infrastructure needs to be set right," says Saurabh Sinha, Co-founder and President of eMids Technologies, a healthcare IT solutions provider based in U.S. The company is one among the long list of other IT vendors looking to grab a piece of the healthcare pie in U.S.

Even after 60 years of its Independence, 65 percent of India's population does not have access to modern medicine, now that's basic. The situation is worse in villages where around 70 percent of population lives. About 80 percent of doctors, 75 percent of dispensaries and 60 percent of hospitals are located in urban areas. In contrast, in China only 15 percent of the population does not have access to modern medicine.

Even the government's insufficient spending in healthcare seems to hamper the development of this critical segment in the country. A WHO report indicates that India spends just 17 percent of its public expenditure on health, while the corresponding percentages for Pakistan, Bangladesh, China and Brazil are 20, 28, 38 and 54, respectively. "In developed countries there is more technology adoption in healthcare compared to other countries, showing that more developed a country is, more importance healthcare gets," says Sinha. So, how developed is India?

According to Human Rights Watch (HRW), an international human rights body, the government counts the number of births in health clinics and hospitals, but these are often woefully under-resourced and under-staffed. The Indian government does not monitor what happens to women after childbirth, especially in the first 24 to 72 critical hours, when the chances of mortality are highest, the report by HRW highlights. With these statistics revealing such a sorry state of affairs, many of these loopholes can be fixed by the government by using an effective monitoring software from one of the service providers.

Sinha believes even the conservative mindset of the Indian medical professionals is another reason for the slow adoption of technology in this space. "The professionals don't like to key in the details into a computer, rather they want to write it on a piece of paper," says Sinha. But, he feels the scenario is improving as a new breed of doctors and nurses are coming into the profession - those who have been influenced by the World Wide Web.

If the details of patients are in the digital form, the process of retrieving that information becomes simpler. For this purpose a hospital needs to use a software solution, which can store the information of all its patients. However, the success of such a system will also depend on the mindset of the medical professionals towards using such technology.

Though, some hospitals make use of technology, it is restricted up to billing and administrative purposes, which unfortunately excludes the main purpose of providing healthcare for all.

However, a silver lining has started to appear as few hospitals have started taking a step in the right direction. Recently, Narayana Nethralaya Postgraduate Institute of Ophthalmology in Bangalore announced that it is piloting software that will push to doctors' iPhones, retinal images collected from patients in remote locations. With this technology, the eye care specialist aims to help the rural patients to avail the same kind of treatment that their urban counterparts receive. Now that's the transformation, technology can bring about in the society.

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