India healthcare providers' IT spend to touch $1.2bn in 2015

Healthcare providers in India are expected to spend USD 1.2 billion on IT products and services in 2015, an increase of 7 per cent over 2014, research firm Gartner said today.

The forecast includes spending by healthcare providers (including hospitals, ambulatory service and physicians practices) on internal services, software, IT services, data center, devices and telecom services.

"IT services, which includes consulting, implementation, IT outsourcing and business process outsourcing, will be the largest overall spending category through 2019 within the health care providers sector," Gartner Research Vice President Anurag Gupta said.

It is expected to reach USD 317 million USD in 2015, up from USD 295 million in 2014 - with the consulting segment growing 11 per cent, he added.

Internal services is expected to grow at the highest pace among the spending categories at 17 per cent to reach USD 297 million in 2015.

Internal services refer to salaries and benefits paid to the information services staff of an organization.

Software spending is forecast to grow 6.2 per cent to reach USD 103 million USD in 2015, up from USD 97 million in 2014, led by growth in vertical specific software.

"India has a young population and a fast growing middle class. Public sector healthcare will expand their focus on providing access to care mainly through primary coverage and leveraging mobile technologies," Gupta said.

Private sector, on the other hand, will focus on building middle tier and tertiary care facilities mainly for the city dwellers, he added.

"India's healthcare technology investments are still very small compared to the overall population. We expect providers to benefit by offering low upfront cost, recurring, or outcome base models, especially in core digitisation technologies like hospital information systems," he said.