‘’Emerging markets continue to move the needle for innovative ways to decrease costs, improve quality’’

According to a report by Frost and Sullivan, India’s healthcare information technology (HIT) market is expected to hit $1.45 billion in 2018, more than three times the $381.3 million reached in 2012. India’s corporate healthcare chains may well be on the way to adopting state-of-the-art HIT systems but does Dell have any IT solutions for Tier II & III cities?

Dr Cliff Bleustein

Dell is actively investing to create healthcare solutions that are aligned with the macroeconomic dynamics of it key target markets. With over 70 per cent of India’s population living in rural areas, Dell’s objective is to create accessible solutions that support organisations in their IT and business goals. An example of this is Dell’s new cloud-based Hospital Information System (HIS) solution that delivers seamlessly integrated clinical and financial systems for hospitals and health providers in India. The solution will support core clinical tasks and back-end needs of providers and ensure smooth access and instant information availability. It is scalable, cost effective, widely accessible and flexible to suit the unique needs of Indian healthcare providers.

How are Dell’s solutions built to enable an inclusive rather than exclusive model of healthcare in India?

For more than 25 years, Dell has played a critical role in transforming computing, enabling more affordable and more pervasive access to technology around the world. When it comes to healthcare this overarching strategy remains the same and Dell is applying the same principles to ensure we create an inclusive model for healthcare solutions within India.

What is Dell’s current market share in the global HIT sector? And specific to India? What is the target growth rate for the next couple of years? How is Dell positioned to become the HIT vendor of choice for India’s healthcare sector vis-a-vis other competitors?

Dell was ranked No.1 in Worldwide Healthcare Provider IT Services, based on revenue by Gartner in 2013. This represents the third year in a row in which Dell bagged this rating. With over 14,000 resources dedicated to healthcare worldwide, many of whom are based in India, Dell is looking to leverage its leading position in the healthcare provider space with its global reach, to maximise it potential in the Indian healthcare market.

Like other nations, India’s healthcare/ hospital sector has lagged other sectors when it comes to adoption of IT. The Frost & Sullivan report mentions ease of integration with existing IT systems and time spent by doctors and employees during the implementation phase as the main concern/challenge. How is Dell responding to these potential legacy and downtime issues?

Dell has invested heavily in its implementation methodology called ADOPTS and processes to decrease the downtown associated with implementation of IT systems. We also use teams composed of both clinicians and technicians to allow for individuals with similar backgrounds and skill sets to assist in the various phases.

As the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare, rolls out in the US, what has been Dell’s learnings from helping US physicians, hospital administrations and other stakeholders cope with these changes?

This is the largest change to the healthcare market in the last 40 years. At a high-level, Obamacare has accelerated the shift from fee-for-service to account-able care. We also see cost pressures, market consolidation, and new payment models. Each of these impacts provider IT departments. We have seen clients increasing look to consolidate and rationalise their current applications, upgrade their infrastructure to decrease total cost of ownership, increasingly outsource business processes and functions within their IT department, move more IT into the cloud, and seek out external guidance to improve operations, work flows, and processes.

It took Obamacare to push the HIT implementation forward in the US but India has no such political/ policy pushes for HIT. What will be/are the drivers for implementation of HIT in India?

On the other hand, in spite of a stupendous growth of healthcare industry in India (with a CAGR of nearly 16 per cent over the last few years), the average IT adoption rate stands at a dismal five per cent. Private healthcare in India plays a dominant role in delivery and has approximately 80 per cent share of healthcare spend. The drive for IT adoption will initially be fuelled by private organisations that want a competitive advantage for attracting patients to their facilities. Leading private organisations will want to differentiate themselves with higher quality, improved value, increased efficiency, and improved physician satisfaction which are all facilitated by enhance IT platforms.

Lately, the Indian government has also realised the value of IT adoption for healthcare delivery, and stepped forward in developing standards for Indian HIT in 2013. India’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has developed an initiative to draft national EHR standards which created a guideline in August 2013 to encourage interoperability, HL7 and ISO standard adoption to capture a minimum standard for patient records. The objective of this initiative is to create a single record for a patient which will have patient-centric information, in chronological order, and can be shared at the national level with different providers.

Like many emerging economies, India’s healthcare sector struggles to cope with the huge disease burden, funding as well as infrastructure issues. Will cost be a barrier in India?

Handling healthcare in the second most populous country is not an easy task for anyone. Yet, India has been successful in eliminating or controlling certain diseases such as small pox, leprosy, polio, and TB.

India’s public health expenditure, as a percentage of GDP, is the lowest among BRIC countries. The latest Five-Year Plan (2012-17) has increased focus on public healthcare and increased the spending provision to 2.5 per cent. There are encouraging steps such as the national health insurance scheme, improving health access in rural areas, where close to 70 per cent population lives, and mid-day meal scheme in schools for improvement in public health.

Innovation will also continue to help drive the costs down as organisations increasing look to ways to change the current care delivery system. These changes have typically occurred in those areas that have the biggest need.

While cost pressures occur in all economies, emerging markets continue to move the needle for innovative ways to decrease costs and improve quality.

Has stakeholder mindset been an issue so far in India?

All economies face challenges related to a diverse group of individuals who hold different perspectives around the delivery and financing of care.

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