BANGALORE, INDIA: A recent research done by Springboard brings out that the market for IT in healthcare in India will grow at a CAGR of 21.8 percent from 2008 to reach US$609.5 million by 2013. If we take the overall perspective of usage of IT by hospitals in India, we find that IT is still at a very nascent stage in this industry vertical. Yes, there are some premier hospitals in urban areas which adopting IT solutions while hospitals in rural segment who are struggling with procuring the basic medical amenities are not really thinking a lot on investing in IT infrastructure.

Let's look at some of the areas in healthcare where IT is set to gain traction in the coming years.

Digitizing Medical Records
The concept of digital hospitals has been on the rise and many players are digitizing their records. Digitizing of medical records will include document imaging, managing of records, and scanning of medical record with storage. Since the time we remember, patient information has been on paper with issues like inefficiency of accessing information, storage, administrative costs, retrieval and overall inefficiency costs and lost or misfiled information cropping up.

But with digitizing medical records, there will be less medical errors, improved clinical documentation and quick and easy access to medical records. One of the most important benefits is that patient wouldn't have to carry all their medical records with them all the time.

E-prescription and Electronic Medical Records Software
The concept of e-prescription is gaining some traction because it brings down the need to keep physical records of patients. All the details connected to a patient ranging from initial assessment to various consultations are fed in the system and can be retrieved from the database at the click of a button.

Searching the previous records of the patients becomes quite a hassle-free exercise for the doctors with the concept of e-prescription coming in. The clean print outs of e-prescriptions are also a boon to the pharmacists and patients alike. There is an important factor that needs to be taken care of, that is data security of the patient's record to avoid any sort of unauthorized access to patient's records.

Electronic Medical Records Software is an interesting which can provide modules that cover e-prescription, automated billing, automated appointment reminders through phone, text message or email, automated color-coded warnings, when prescriptions are not compatible with the drugs the patients are currently taking, etc.