Small, mid-sized hospitals - potential market for IT

By siliconindia   |   Friday, 12 October 2007, 19:30 IST
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Chennai: In a study by market research agency IMRB for IBM, it was found that in a small or mid sized hospitals, on an average there are six PCs in doctors' consulting rooms as against four in accounting or finance departments, reported Economic Times. The study covered 127 small and mid-sized hospitals across 12 cities. Traditionally, in the healthcare segment, computers enter functions such as finance and administration before getting into core areas such as clinical information systems. Even larger hospitals have just started welcoming IT in the core areas. The finding indicates that doctors probably would be more willing to let IT in than previously thought. And this could turn out to be a huge opportunity for those who provide IT application in SaaS (software as a service) format. A Srivathsan, VP, IBM, said, "The average number of PCs in doctors' consulting rooms, operating rooms and labs was the most surprising finding from the study. We did not expect this at all. We expected that most of the PCs would be in the admin, finance, or front office areas." This, in effect, means that if clinical applications were to be made available in an 'easy to use, easy to pay' format, doctors are likely to start using them. "This is contrary to the popular perception that doctors are technology averse, and will resist the use of computers," Srivathsan said. The IMRB study, which surveyed senior employees in different departments such as administration, IT and finance found that hospitals were open to more investments in IT as they saw it could save time, increase efficiency and reduce manpower. However, high costs and lack of skilled manpower to rightly utilize the technology acted as barriers to adopt IT. Mid-sized hospitals are expected to be $10 billion in aggregate revenues by 2010-11, and have the potential to spend between $150-200 million, annually on IT, one-third of which could be on software applications. Providing software as a service could be a way into these hospitals, not just for hospital administration functions but for clinical information systems as well. Most large hospitals have already started investing in Clinical Information Systems. Currently, these applications are expensive (even for the larger hospitals), but as the base increases, prices will come down.