Cloud can be IT enabler for Indian healthcare

NEW DELHI, INDIA: The total addressable opportunity for Cloud solutions in the Indian healthcare industry (Hospitals) is estimated at USD 600 million by 2020, said a study conducted by Zinnov Management consulting, a management consulting firm.

The study titled ‘Cloud Computing: An enabler of IT in Indian Healthcare Sector’ highlights that cloud can potentially address close to 40 per cent of the total annual healthcare IT spending in India.

It further revealed that the current healthcare spending stands at USD 54 billion and is expected to reach USD 164 billion by 2019-20. Also, the estimated annual IT spending within existing hospitals in India is approximately USD 191 million currently and is expected to reach a mark of USD 1.5 billion by 2020.

The study brings to light some intriguing trends that are currently taking place in the healthcare industry across the three service models of Cloud, i.e. Software-as-a-service (SaaS), Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) and Platform-as-a-service (PaaS). 

According to the findings, the SaaS aspect of cloud computing would create opportunities in software for the sector, while the opportunity for hardware and services would come from IaaS and PaaS respectively.

Pari Natarajan, CEO, Zinnov Management Consulting, Pvt. Ltd, said, “The healthcare infrastructure in India is currently under invested with more than 50 per cent gap compared to its global peers. This highlights an urgent need to scale up the infrastructure to cater to a population of over a billion. This opens up a huge opportunity for ‘Cloud’, which has the potential to radically transform the healthcare landscape in India.”

A preliminary assessment of the various hospital functions was conducted as a part of the study, bringing to light the opportunity areas within these functions that have the potential of shifting to cloud based solutions.

The study also highlights opportunity areas within functions like capacity planning, capturing of basic care data and clinical data, where cloud can be leveraged by the Indian hospitals.

Speaking about the market drivers and potential opportunity, Animesh Khan, manager-Consulting, Zinnov Management consulting, said, “Considering most of the Indian hospitals outsource their IT functions, ‘cloud computing’ becomes a natural fit. Furthermore, new regulatory measures are helping to augment the cause of cloud based services and solutions for the Indian healthcare industry.”

According to the study, the opportunity for cloud based solutions among Indian hospitals lies across the cloud service (SaaS, IaaS, PaaS) and delivery model matrix (Private, Public, Hybrid).

Across the three cloud delivery models, Private and Hybrid cloud is expected to find greater acceptance among large hospitals. On the other hand, the public Cloud is expected to find preference among small and medium hospitals for SaaS and IaaS.

Last but not the least, the study highlights that cloud based solutions can potentially help in improving two aspects of Indian Healthcare services delivery.

First it can lower IT Infrastructure cost as cloud computing can help reduce cost by approximately 30 per cent and second, augment service quality at less cost to hospitals, which could potentially help in delivering applications such as CRM ,which in turn would help improve user experience.