Indian healthcare providers will spend $1 billion on IT products and services this year, a 7 per cent rise over 2012, according to a Gartner report.
The forecast includes spending by healthcare providers (hospitals and hospital systems, ambulatory service and physicians' practices) on internal IT (including personnel), hardware, software, external IT services and telecommunications.
“IT services, which includes consulting, implementation, IT outsourcing and business process outsourcing, will be the largest overall spending category through 2017 the forecast period within the healthcare providers sector,” said Anurag Gupta, Research Director at Gartner.
“IT services are expected to grow 6.9 per cent to reach $276 million in 2013, up from $258 million in 2012 – with the consulting segment growing by 12.4 percent,” Gupta added.
Internal services will achieve the highest growth rate amongst the spending categories – forecast to be 14.5 per cent this year. Internal services refer to salaries and benefits paid to the information services staff of an organisation. The information services staff includes all company employees that plan, develop, implement and maintain information systems.
Software will achieve an 11 per cent growth rate to reach $98 million this year, up from $88 million in 2012, led by growth in vertical specific software (software applications that are unique to a vertical industry.