As head of Dell’s global $1.5 billion healthcare and life sciences services business unit, what is the strategic vision behind the recently launched cloud-based solution for India’s healthcare market?
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Sid Nair
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The Cloud solution is the execution of one of the key strategic priorities that the Healthcare and Life Sciences (HCLS) organisation outlined at the beginning of our new fiscal – international market expansion.
This solution is also an integral part of Dell’s vision of building future-ready IT platforms to provide cutting-edge technology and services that enable innovation in Health IT. The cloud-based solution extends Dell’s Cloud strategy of providing choice and flexibility to customers to drive tangible business results through cloud computing.
It’s an exciting time for us to be part of the Indian healthcare industry. Currently at $128 billion, healthcare is one of the fastest growing industries in the country, with a CAGR of 15 per cent.
The hospital-in-a-box solution seamlessly and cost effectively delivers integrated clinical and financial systems for healthcare providers in India. We are extending Dell’s proven capabilities and global healthcare leadership to India and have brought in the best-of-breed combination of HIS and ERP to help providers achieve their goal of providing efficient, information-driven healthcare in an affordable way. We will continue to bring to India unique solutions that will allow healthcare providers to focus on their number one goal– enhanced patient care.
The Software as a Service (SaaS) based solution allows healthcare providers to quickly respond to increasing demands of infrastructure and storage, and train staff without huge capital investments and recurrent readiness costs. End-users (physicians, nurses and back office staff) can get instant access to cloud-based applications and reports through the use of a simple conventional browser. They can also remain connected via smart phones and other hand-held devices, ensuring secure and anytime, anywhere access to information.
The hospital-in-a-box solution allows for quick installation- hospitals can be up and ready in a week.
The solution is truly one of a kind in terms of its capabilities, delivery model and pricing. We believe it will be a game changer for the Indian healthcare provider market where hospitals are constrained by huge upfront capital investments, and higher cost of licensing, maintenance and support.
What is the cost of deployment? What is the projected value proposition? Any examples of successful implementation?
The solution caters to different provider segment in the gamut of healthcare delivery including single clinics, chain of clinics, mid-sized hospitals, large hospitals and groups. So the cost of deployment varies based on size of delivery organisation, scope, and users. The solution is strategically designed for Indian requirements — to keep the huge upfront cost and recurring operational cost at bay. In the Indian healthcare provider industry many of the small to mid-sized players shy away from modern technology adoption due to huge cost of infrastructure, hardware and software. Our pay-as-you-go pricing model brings down the total cost of ownership by 50 to 60 per cent and helps in increasing operational efficiency and productivity. We have piloted the solution in a few hospitals so far and the response has been very positive.
Who are your technology partners for the cloud based solution?
Our partners for this solution are Ubq Technologies and Ramco Systems. They will help us deliver an end-to-end proposition to providers. Ubq’s Hospital Information System (HIS) solution, medics, will serve as the front-end application for patient-centric activities and will integrate with Ramco ERP on Cloud to provide customers seamless enterprise-wide application on the cloud.
What is the projected growth for the different customer segments served by your vertical?
The global healthcare IT services market is expected to grow at an approximate five per cent CAGR over the next five years spanning the hospital, health insurer and life science sub vertical markets. As a market leader in providing transformational services to healthcare and life sciences customers, through 15,000 employees worldwide, we are expecting to grow above market rates.
Industry analysts continue to recognise our leadership in healthcare- Gartner has ranked us as #1 healthcare IT provider for the third consecutive time this year. Everest Group has recently positioned Dell’s healthcare IT services in the Leader category for Healthcare Payer IT and as a market Star Performer for Payer Information Technology Outsourcing (ITO) on the PEAK Matrix.
Amongst Dell’s priorities for this year is expansion into certain geographies and a new dedicated focus on the mid-market segment in these markets. Can you give more details?
We are focusing on expanding beyond our current priority markets which include the US, the UK and the Middle East. We are reaching out to emerging markets with targeted healthcare solutions, like this cloud solution, in India, China and Latin America.
Governments across the globe are focused on reducing cost of healthcare while patients are demanding more from the system. What transformative changes do you see in the sector?
We believe that a number of industry transformation trends will fundamentally change the healthcare market over the next few years:
- Capitation – To improve quality and reduce costs, healthcare payment reform is driving the movement from ‘pay for volume’ to ‘pay for quality’. Health insurance payers are moving towards paying a flat fee for each patient it covers to healthcare providers as a way to reduce costs and improve performance by shifting the risk to healthcare providers.
- Consolidation – Increased amounts of consolidation is occurring as health systems/hospital chains try to take advantage of economies of scale and expand into new markets/regions by acquiring smaller hospitals. In addition, payers and provider health systems are beginning to merge as they see opportunities to reduce risk and maximise reimbursement under a single organisation.
- Coordination – Greater emphasis is being made to care for patients outside of the hospital to reduce cost and burden on healthcare resources. ‘Avoidable’ Emergency Room cost is estimated at $6 billion a year when patients could be potentially seen by their local primary care physician. By creating better care coordination across the care continuum, the healthcare industry hopes to deliver the right care to the right patient at the right time.
- Competition –Increasing competition between providers and payer organisations as they compete for patients is changing the way many organisations think about their business strategies as they try to focus the patient at the centre of how they operate.
- Consumerism – Patients are becoming more conscious of their health and are wanting to lead healthier lifestyle and in turn demanding more and more information. Both providers and payers are also looking to utilise the ever expanding data that is available, to provide personalised medicine and manage overall population health as way to improve quality and reduce cost.
How is Dell positioning itself to help healthcare clients transform themselves to be in tune with these changes?
Dell transforms care by connecting people to the right technology and processes, creating information driven healthcare and accelerating innovation. Dell supports the entire spectrum of care delivery: hospitals, health systems, physician practices, health plans and healthcare supply chain organisations. Dell’s healthcare strategy centres around our fundamental understanding of our customers, combined with deep IT domain capabilities across our infrastructure and cloud, applications and business processing outsourcing services. Our deep vertical expertise allows us to provide our healthcare customers with innovative solutions that address key challenges in their respective markets. Our healthcare team has continued to expand key solutions that aim to improve quality and help reduce healthcare costs; including our Dell Clinical Cloud Archive, Electronic Medical Record Support, Payer Health Insurance Exchange and Predicative Analytics.
What is your advice/ recommendation for Indian healthcare delivery players on the best plan to leverage IT and feed their growth strategies?
If you look at the Indian population of ~1.2 billion and the average beds availability, you will find a large gap that has to be filled. India needs to be able to add around 80,000 beds every year for another 10 years to be self-sufficient in terms of availability of beds. This can be viewed from two angles.
The first is business expansion where there will be organic and inorganic growth in this segment with new players joining in, mergers and acquisitions and FDIs. This business expansion is a long-term strategy which needs to be closely associated with IT requirements to fill the gaps to provide wheels for smooth expansion. The healthcare IT outsourcing in Indian hospitals so far has been minimal with mid and large organisations preferring to keep their IT in-house. This leaves them with little time and resources to focus on their core objective- quality care to patients. This needs to change so that hospitals can utilise their skilled resources which is a major cause of rising operational cost for patient care where they belong.
The second point is huge amount of patient records and its digitisation due to beds additions and expansion. Currently, mid to large organisations spend about 55 per cent on hardware and another 25 per cent on software. With the current pressing economic conditions where revenue margins are low, this amount is going to be unsustainable in near future. With one to two per cent of IT budget, the adoption of new technology will be near impossible and the entire budget will be used up just for support activities.
The need of hour for the current Indian healthcare market is to reduce complexity through integration, creation of a unique patient experience, addressing patient mobility and bringing standardisation by adopting seamless automated workflows to ease the pressure on care providers with all around accessibility. As mentioned earlier, Dell is committed to bringing business transformation with affordable cutting edge technology to healthcare providers that can help them increase productivity and efficiency.
With the cloud solution we are presenting an ideal solution to Indian healthcare industry. We are confident that with the solid value proposition that this solution offers, healthcare providers will adopt this solution for betterment of healthcare delivery in order to create a unique patient experience.