Indian hospitals take the IT ladder to scale up

The Indian health care industry is on a growth trajectory. The medical tourism sector alone is expected to become a $2 billion business by 2012, with a growth rate of 25 per cent per year, says the Indian tourism ministry.

According to industry experts, it is the urge to sustain this growth that is prompting the health care industry to adopt IT (information technology) applications.

Apart from using hi-tech technology in diagnosis, Indian hospitals are also looking at integrating their various branches with relevant applications. According to a latest report by Springboard Research, India has the fastest growing health care IT market in Asia with an expected growth rate of 22 per cent.

Springboard Research data show that the total market for IT applications in the health care industry in India was $149.7 million (around Rs 613.7 crore) in 2006 and is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 22.1 to reach $332.8 million (Rs 1,364 crore) in 2010.

Wockhardt Hospitals, a part of the $300 million Wockhardt Group, with 12 hospitals across the country will spend close to Rs 10 crore this fiscal on IT systems.

Vishal Bali, CEO, Wockhardt Hospitals, says: "The first priority for us is to enable a seamless flow of information within the facilities."

The hospital has recently implemented a picture archiving and communication system (PACS). This will allow doctors to access all the information related to the patient right from day one.

Manipal Hospital is another instance "" its IT spend went up by 5 per cent a year. Mutanna CG, director administration, Manipal Health System, believes that as the health care industry will grow, its dependence on IT applications will increase. "This fiscal, we will spend around Rs 15 crore on IT," he adds.

The hospital is in the process of buying an HR solutions software from an Australian company. It also plans to install PACS.

Agrees Manish Gupta, CIO, Fortis group. "There is too much of unstructured data in our industry in the form of prescriptions. We want to be able to capture the entire cycle of a patient's treatment "" right from prescription to treatment and the follow-ups," he says. The group with 14 hospitals has been spending between Rs 1 crore and Rs 2 crore on each of its branch for IT systems.

"The patient management system is in place. Now, we want to get to the clinical side. We also plan to centralise our entire technology department," adds Gupta.