Why ICT is vital for healthcare industry

NEW DELHI, INDIA: As India is fast becoming a medical tourism hub, the public healthcare sector is poised to leverage ICT in a big way, though the spend till now is dismal.

A recent LSI Financial Services study and the budgetary announcement by the Center point to the changing trends. India's healthcare industry is expected to garner US $155 billion in revenue by 2017, the study said. With a focus on health improvement, the 12th Five Year Plan too ups expenditure to 2.5 per cent of the GDP.

Speaking to CIOL, Dell Services (Healthcare and Lifesciences) VP and global GM Sid Nair said that India needs to spend more on IT services in the wellness arena. "By leveraging ICT, lot of benefits can be reaped with optimum quality and affordable healthcare services," he said. Nair feels that India's wellness pie is close to US $50 billion in collation to US $5 trillion worldwide revenue.

"India needs public healthcare infrastructure and the government should look at policy framework to offer services in remote locations," feels the IT services major. Nair believes that a plethora of services can be offered to government and private hospitals with robust systems that facilitate hardware and software convergence. With comprehensive infrastructure, Dell banks on its cloud-based delivery models for analytics and personalized medicine.

Nair believes that India's wellness industry investment in ICT would be around US $600 million in the next five years. "Currently, the Indian hospitals spend less than 5 per cent in IT. With infrastructure-as-a-service, cloud is best suited for wellness sector," he added. The IT giant, which has wellness solutions portfolio, believes in empowering healthcare facilities with ICT.