HL7 course to boost healthcare outsourcing

Software professionals from India can now appear for an online course, which will prepare them for a Health Level Seven (HL7) certification -- a standard which helps hospitals and clinics from all over the world to exchange medical data besides being important for clinical trials. The last date for registration is March 3, 2008.

The hospital care business in the US amounts to approximately $700 billion, and administrative costs are estimated to be 14% or around $100 billion. Spending from the US market is expected to grow to $38 billion during 2007-08, states a report by Zinnov Research and Consulting, making healthcare outsourcing a big business opportunity. The global healthcare provider market currently is dominated by firms like CSC, IBM, Accenture, EDS and Perot Systems. Indian service providers accounted for only $115 million (Rs 460 crore) worth of outsourcing during 2005-06.

One reason is that India does not have enough HL7-certified professionals, which this online course intends to bridge. Indian firms, though, are getting their act together. HL7 India has been conducting certification exams in India since 2002, and India currently has around 300 HL7-certified professionals.

The course, which costs $100 (around Rs 4,000), does not issue an HL7.org certification. It, however, prepares one for the certification exam. Discounted for India and China (costs around Rs 14,000 for professionals in the US or Sweden), the course is estimated to take about 50 hours to complete.

Jill H Kaufman, Program Director, Healthcare and Life Sciences Standards, IBM (and also on the HL7 Board of Directors), says: "There will be 100 students accepted into this class of which 13 will be from India (China too has 13 students). Students who are not accepted from the course are put on a waitlist, and will have priority enrollment for future classes. The course is over 10 weeks and is estimated to take about five hours per week for the readings and assignments."

HL7 is one of several ANSI-accredited Standards Developing Organisations (SDOs) operating in the healthcare arena. Hospitals and other healthcare provider firms use different computer systems for everything from billing records to patient tracking, explains Kaufman. All of these systems should communicate when they receive new information to make healthcare efforts more responsive.

There are several healthcare standards development efforts currently underway throughout the world. "However, HL7 is singular as it focuses on the interface requirements of the entire healthcare organisation, while most other efforts focus on the requirements of a particular department," says Kaufman.

Incidentally, there are 15-20 large- and mid-sized vendors in India that provide IT services to the healthcare market in North America and Europe. Moreover, the clinical research outsourcing (CRO) market in India is also expected to cross $10 billion by 2010.

Players such as Tata Consultancy Services (around 4% of its revenues), HCL Technologies, and Wipro have been working in this space for quite some years. Other vendors are taking the acquisition route for faster growth in this space. Cognizant, for instance, acquired US-based marketRx; Firstsource bought US-based MedAssist, which gave the company the required exposure and client base to cater to the healthcare business; and Apollo Hospitals took over Zavata, a US-based healthcare BPO.