Is IT hospice at government hospitals?

PUNE,INDIA: IT adoption in government healthcare set-ups is still a grey area in India, and success depends on many soft issues before a government hospital is successful with IT's dose. So feels Abhijit Sane, business development manager, Healthcare domain, DesignTech Systems Ltd.

“Management's will and end-user enforcement are two key points that can make or mar IT adoption. We have done a couple of installations but what we have experienced is, as challenge is skilling people, which further gets wasted with transfer of people that is a regular feature with government employees,” he explains.

“It's hard to reskill anew when a person is transferred and even the trained employee feels that it was better to operate manually like before. Enforcing use of IT is an issue.”

Among the 40 ERPs in healthcare it has covered so far, the company has three government installations, that includes a government lab and a set-up in Chhattisgarh's remote tribal belt.

The company is now eying opportunities abroad, and South Africa and Middle East are high on its radar. Incidentally, according to Qatar’s ICT Landscape 2009, the first country-wide, survey-based ICT study released recently, government hospitals and health centers are well equipped to provide Internet access here. About 95 per cent of all physicians and 78 per cent of nurses have Internet connection in government hospitals and health centers.

In fact, in the recent CII Medi Tech Summit 2009 in Mumbai, experts had pointed out that in India the impressive growth of $2 billion Indian medical technology industry in the last five years has opened an exciting and viable market opportunity, yet the penetration of medical technology has been largely urban centric, making quality healthcare less accessible to the masses.

Another expert added that healthcare needs to move out of the hospital and reach its end-users and for this you need the right IT to bridge the gap.

As per news reports, in the same summit, Dr NB Dholakia, Joint Director (MCH), Department of Health & Family Welfare, Government of Gujarat, said, "When the Government needs to scale healthcare services to the extent needed in India, there is not only a need of bringing industry participants together, but also to sustain the collaboration on the initiatives for a long period of time. With this in mind, PPPs can be considered the best option amongst the rest."

Later in the CII summit for healthcare, as per media reports, Ashok Kakkar, vice president - Government Relations and Customer Solutions, GE Healthcare, South Asia stressed upon the fact that with the current healthcare infrastructure, and the current rate, it will take at least 60 to 70 years to add up to the average standards. “Through partnerships we can ramp up this pace. And neither government nor private sector alone can do it. They need to come together. Government gets to fulfill its aim of providing critical service to general,” he said.