Indian IT to nourish U.S. healthcare
By agencies   |   Wednesday, 06 July 2005, 19:30 IST
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BANGALORE: Increased healthcare costs, unbearable squeeze on margins, acute talent shortage and an aging population are compelling healthcare establishments in the U.S. and Europe to look at Indian IT and ITES providers. And major IT companies are preparing for this through acquisition of healthcare focused IT/ITES units. A recent Data Monitor reports that the U.S. healthcare industry alone is expected to spend $34 billion to develop supporting technologies by 2008, against $26 billion last year. Traditionally, the healthcare industry has been a slowcoach in adoption of technologies. However, there has been a renewed momentum, driven by the Bush administration's push for IT in healthcare. Britain is another country that is increasingly realizing the importance of this. It has already announced several multi-billion IT projects to support its healthcare industry. "All these have expanded the healthcare IT market opportunities for India in terms of automation, clinical process outsourcing, data monitoring, reading of magnetic resonance images (MRI), EEGs, ECGs, insurance claim processing and payment processing," says Saji Salam, chairman of HL7 (India), an international healthcare standard. The domestic providers are currently in the process of acquiring domain expertise. The last quarter also witnessed a spate of M&As in the space, including large deals like IBM-HealthLink, MphasiS-Eldorado, Accenture-CapGemini's hospital division and WNS Global Services-Claims BPO. Companies like Wipro, Infosys and Syntel are also likely to get into such M&As, say industry sources. Bhasker Menon, president of MphasiS BPO says, "Healthcare practices are going to be the next BPO wave after financial services and accounting practices.'' According to Neeraj Bhargava, CEO of WNS, "Healthcare is going to be a priority sector for outsourcing.'' P V Kannan, CEO of 24/7Customer, says that although healthcare remains a conservative niche, it could become the natural extension of other high-end BPO services that are currently being offered by Indian providers.

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