An Rx for Indian outsourcing providers
March 12, 2009
The US President Barack Obama’s $19 billion health stimulus package could be a shot in the arm for the Indian IT industry as well. When one door slams, the other one flies open. This in effect could be the impact of President Obama’s $19 billion package for the US healthcare system that could also benefit the Indian IT service providers, notwithstanding President Obama’s still resistance of the outsourcing trend.
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act incidentally, allocates $19.2 billion to health IT, out of which nearly $17 billion are set to be used for maintaining electronic health records (EHRs) mainly to cut costs, red tape and the need to run repeat tests that are often very expensive. Setting up of an EHR system involves scheduling, patient registration, billing and reporting processes.
In the US, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) calls for establishing privacy procedures, informing patients about these procedures, training employees to follow strict privacy guidelines, designating an individual to oversee the organization’s privacy initiatives, and securing patient records. All this and more would be done through secure online EHR systems that with the availability of these fresh resources should be in place by 2014.
This measure undoubtedly opens up a huge opportunity for Indian IT firms; particularly those specializing in the EHR space, such as iSoft that already does this for the NHS, the National Programme for IT in healthcare in the UK and has a tool called Lorenzo Studio that it proposes to now sell in the US.
Likewise, Wipro that through a wholly owned subsidiary, Infocrossing, Inc. is appointed a Medicaid fiscal agent for Missouri, would be interested in tapping the new opportunity, along with Bangalore-based Apollo Health Street (AHS) that according to media reports (Indian IT to boom on U.S. healthcare stimulus) is also in the race for a piece of this American pie.
Potential areas of interest to the Indian IT companies in the EHR space could be EHR product development (although there are very few players in this) and on the services side, customization of existing products to a hospital’s requirements, providing on or off-site maintenance and support, reporting services and systems integration. Other areas to tap could be product evaluation, business process management, HER-related security services etc. (Health Book Keepers)
“I had a stimulus party the other day,” declared David Ahern, assistant professor of psychology at Harvard Medical School, who heads two national efforts promoting electronic health care in the US. (Is $19B right Rx for health IT? )
David Ahern has reportedly also said, “Remote diagnostic systems] should be paid for under this stimulus package because they would have a meaningful impact on health care.”
Is the President listening?
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With the current backlash on outsourcing and H1B visa I do not think foreign outsource vendors can get more out of the stimulus money. May be if the economy improves in the next year, they may get some business from the stimulus money.