Information technology can improve healthcare delivery

There was a need to make the healthcare sector more IT-oriented, opined experts at a seminar on healthcare organised by the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII).

According to Rajarshi Sengupta, executive director, Deloitte & Touche Consulting, there was urgent need to integrate the back office operations of hospitals by use of technology.

Apart from few hospitals in south India, no hospital in the country had tried to integrate the back office operations.

Speaking on the occasion, Hemant Kumar, director, health solutions group, India, Microsoft Corporation, said the aggregate revenue of the mid-sized hospitals in the country was expected to be $10 billion by 2010-11. This would be possible because of the unique combination of low cost and high standard of healthcare services in India.

In India, the success rate of bypass surgery was 98.7 per cent, against, 97.5 per cent in the US. In India, the cost of the surgery was one-tenth of that in the US. However, still 60 per cent of the patient's time in a hospital is spend on furnishing information to the doctors.

Experience shows that a patient's time in his stay at the hospital could be reduced by 39 per cent by improved IT structure, Kumar said.

V V Varma, managing director, Lazarus Hospital, said, studies show that PPP partnership in Singapore resulted in increase in life expectancy, which 78.4 per cent in Singapore, against 63 years in India.