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V. Rishi Kumar

HYDERABAD, March 13

TECHNOLOGY adoption in the domestic healthcare sector is about 10 to 15 years behind other sectors such as banking and finance.

With corporate houses and various players, including the Government, looking at ways to bring in efficiencies, this sector offers huge business opportunities, according to Mr J. Rajagopal, Director and Head of Global Life Sciences and Health Care Practice, Tata Consultancy Services.

Giving a perspective on how TCS viewed the emerging opportunities in the sector and its healthcare practice, Mr Rajagopal, who was earlier with KPMG and Coopers and Lybrand, told Business Line "We are bullish on this sector," he said.

The Indian health care informatics business is estimated at about Rs 500 crore. This is growing at the rate of about 10-15 per cent a year, which is slow considering the huge potential and the advantages technology can bring. The growth is currently being driven by various players in the healthcare sector-- Government, insurance companies, consumers and corporate hospitals.

Mr Rajagopal said that numerous factors had contributed in the recent past towards improving the quality of healthcare services across the globe. The prominent among them are availability of tools and services such as hospital management systems and decision support systems that improve diagnosis and treatment, telemedicine with real time image transfers, and health information disseminated through networks to the general public.

The TCS Life Sciences Practice aims at offering end-to-end solutions, services and products to life sciences and healthcare institutions worldwide. The services range from application development management, outsourcing, systems integration and embedded systems.

On the other hand, in the solutions space the company, with several pharma majors, is engaged in providing solutions for clinical trails, 21CFR 11 Compliance and Hippa consulting and remediation.

Pulse drive

It has lined up a series of interactive meetings with major players in the health care segment under a new initiative termed— Pulse--to explain the benefits of technology, its implications and prospects.

This six-city yatra is to be held in the four metros and Hyderabad and Bangalore with the first such meeting to be held at Hyderabad. In each city about 100 people from 50 corporate houses/hospitals and other representatives would be invited to an interactive session where they would be exposed to the latest technology developments, Mr Rajagopal said.

Currently, TCS is associated with large clients across the country such as Punjab Health Systems Corporation, Mediciti Hospitals, Workhardt Hospital and Kovai Medical Centre and Hospital.

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