Indian IT set to Experience Healthcare Services boom

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Even though the majority of India's huge and very important contributor to the GDP,  $57 billion software services exports are made up of three sectors.

BFSI (banking, financial services and insurance), telecom and manufacturing. However, moving forward, with the prospect of a reduced growth in BFSI and telecom sectors, the focus is likely to be shifting towards untapped opportunities in verticals like healthcare - a much smaller vertical, but one that holds huge amount of potential in today’s scenario of technology uptake.

A recent J.P. Morgan Asia Pacific Equity Research report says that the landscape for offshoring of healthcare services is turning more favourable due to a combination of macro factors, evolving technologies and an increase in offshore of specific sub-segments within healthcare.

In the year 2009, the US national health expenditure stood at about $2.5 trillion. Driven by the need for greater cost effectiveness to support the healthcare needs of an aging American population, healthcare providers like hospitals are increasingly switching to technology and business services. The ageing population in advanced countries is creating a large pool of above working-age population, implying that programmes such as social security and medical care will grow more rapidly than before.

Healthcare at the Helm

Experts within the domain clearly say that it is healthcare will emerge as the next ‘big wave' globally and that more will come to Indian companies, including big and small.

Hence, India’s IT prowess will surely be translated towards the healthcare segment as well. And comp[anies like Infosys, Wipro and TCS will play a major role in terms of defining the future course of action for the delivery of healthcare services on global scale.

However, it is very important to note that the Healthcare segment involves many more sub-segments and activities than what Indian IT has been usually and traditionally doing so far.

Four sub-segments are the payer (healthcare insurance); the provider (hospital/physicians); big pharma (both pre-production and post-production phases) and connectivity (which integrates the offline into the online and manages the entire administrative process using digitisation and other technologies). And with India’s IT services sector already shining bright on the global front, the country is set to play a very important role in all of these mentioned activities on a global scale and dimension.