IT majors eye health sector deals

With the high-end health care sector booming, IT solution companies are eager to participate in the growth story by providing electronic solutions for health care management.

Some of the leading IT companies operating in the country, like the Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Novell India, Intel, HP and GE health care are scampering to enter the niche market of health care management.

For example, Intel was betting big on its latest product called the Mobile Clinical Assistant (MCA), a device to electronically monitor a patient through a hand-held device.

The device is still in its trial phase in two hospitals "" Ruby Hall in Pune and Satya Sai Baba Hospital at Bangalore.

The company hopes to launch it nationally by 2009, when detailed business plans will be drawn, according to Atul Bengeri, industry manager for digital health for Intel. "Currently, less than 3 per cent of a hospital's expense goes into IT. Intel has been in the business of chip-manufacturing for the last 40 years. However, for the last four-five years, we are trying to find out why IT has not penetrated into healthcare," he said.

Similarly, the health care management division of TCS is planning a new product for pharmaceutical regulatory compliances during clinical trials. The product would improve the safety of persons undergoing trials, said Biplab Biswas, principal consultant of TCS.

P K Mishra, consulting architect of Novell India, said open source technology under the Linux platform could provide solutions like imaging, visualisation, signal-processing, bio-surveillance for an integrated health care management.

According to Faisal M Paul, country manager for high performance computing and OSLO at HP, the medical information system providing end-to-end infrastructure solution for hospitals developed by HP was a success in private and public hospitals in Maharashtra.

Areas like life sciences provided opportunities of growth in the health care sector, he said.

Akshay Randive, sales specialist of GE Healthcare said its IT solution called PACS could significantly reduce paper work and help hospitals go digital in big way.