Patient Advocacy - Giving Voice to Patients (4th Annual Conference)

Aniruddha Nene, 21CI Board Member & Director Sales (Public Sector India) gave a presentation at the 4th Annual Conference: Patient Advocacy - Giving Voice to Patients








ICT is driving the Med-tech Industry

‘Though investment for hardware takes a major share in the total investment for ICT, the software segment is growing at an annual growth rate of 15 percent’ says Rajmohan Nair, Head – Marketing and Partner Sales, 21st Century Informatics

What ate the unique medical technology product/solution you provide to hospitals?
We have been successfully transforming 21CI Apex Enterprise HIS into a new healthcare technology platform. This is true, if you go through market acceptance of our product that we received a good response from the market. The product is designed so as to help our customers to standardise their treatment processes, resulting in increased safety and quality for patients and increased productivity for the hospitals. With this we could bring-in uniqueness by providing innovative solutions that can integrate and coordinate a diverse set of factors including medical technologies, critical processes, inventories, revenue cycle management and MIS analytics. The solutions address the key challenges of ‘change management’ that constantly affecting the modern healthcare organisation.
Rajmohan Nair
India's emerging economic trends, increase in medical enterpreneurs and demand for quality healthcare is fuelling growth in private and public sector investments in healthcare in urban India
India’s emerging economic trends, increase in medical entrepreneurs and demand for quality healthcare is fuelling growth in private and public sector investments in healthcare in urban India
Can you tell us about any of your innovation in medical technology field?
We found that CXOs of healthcare organisations are facing the twin challenges of delivering a high quality healthcare in one hand and maintaining significant operational process efficiencies and cost optimisation in other end. We are constantly innovating to provide new features and functionality in such a way that both these objectives are met. We are working on a new technology platform that enables rapid expansion of functionality during IT products that serves these challenges faced by CXOs. Our innovation team is currently working on launching our new platform ‘Componium’, which is aimed at empowering the entire value chain of Business Software Application IT lifecycle. With this platform, different stakeholders will be able to contribute to enrich the habitat and build newer functionalities for a specific or generic need of businesses.
Which are the hospitals have taken your solutions?
This quarter of 2013, we have received a good response from Indian healthcare market. Our Flagship product Apex Enterprise HIS product has been selected by reputed brands from the Industry such as Hiranandani Group of Hospitals, Mumbai, QRG Healthcare group, NCR Region and HLL Life Care, India.
What is the size of medical technology product and solution in India? In what percentage the segment is growing?
ICT also plays an important role in this growth. India’s emerging economic trends, urbanisation, growing middleclass, increase in medical entrepreneurs and demand for quality healthcare is fuelling growth in private sector and public sector investments in healthcare in urban India. ICT opportunities in tier two and tier three cities is growing fast. Mid-market opportunities & green field projects are having reasonably allocating good investments in ICT. The report about healthcare industry says that it is growing 20 percent per annum. Though investment for hardware takes a major share in the total investment for ICT, the software segment is growing at an annual growth rate of 15 percent. In a few years, healthcare technology segment, both product and services will grow faster due to technology triggered introductions of big data, BOYD, cloud services and other innovations in mobile solutions.

Disclaimer: This article was published in eHealth Magazine's July 2013 issue. The article can also be assed through the following link. All products and brand names mentioned are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. All Trademarks remain the property of their respective holders, and in no way indicates any relationship between 21st Century Informatics B.V or its associates and the holders of said trademarks.
eHEALTH is a premier print and online monthly publication focusing on the latest and most cutting-edge in healthcare ICTs and medical technologies. - For more information please visit: http://ehealth.eletsonline.com

21st Century Informatics:Healthcare not Global, but Local and Sensitive

Vasukumar Nair



By CR Team
Monday, June 17, 2013

Vasukumar Nair
Vasukumar Nair, Director – Marketing & Sales, 21st Century Informatics
The Indian healthcare sector is increasingly adopting interoperability and standardisation of healthcare technology, yet slow decision-making and low-budget allocation from the providers pose as the key challenges. The industry is still struggling with the lack of awareness on advantages of IT automation. Not consider IT as an enabler to improve organisational performance reflects in their IT budget allocation. In this challenging environment, 21st Century Informatics (21CI), a global healthcare informatics solutions company, is addressing these issues by providing transformative solutions that improve the availability, accessibility and affordability of healthcare services.

21CI offers innovative healthcare informatics solutions used by healthcare service providers such as hospitals, diagnostic centers and speciality clinics among others. Their innovative offerings of Healthcare Information System, Clinic Information System, Laboratory Information System, Advanced Imaging System, and Electronic Medical Records are process driven, professionally made with input from practicing clinicians and are open to make the system 'tailor-made' for different sub specialities. Today, the company serves more than 500 sites and their experience has helped them offer a global perspective to the Indian healthcare industry that is slowly opening the doors for automation. Through their constant effort, 21CI is able to convince their customers and implement internationally accepted SOPS & best practices in the areas that they automate.

"Since we serve the emerging markets, we find a mix of new technologies that are already being used or are in development. Domain oriented areas such as EMR with Clinical Decision Support Systems has satisfactorily penetrated in some countries," says Vasukumar Nair, Director-Marketing & Sales, 21st Century Informatics. 21CI is currently working on additional areas such as patient kiosks, doctor’s tablets and personalised performance dashboards for the top management for a couple of their new HIS projects.

Several Indian hospitals are gearing up to accept the reasonable value for good systems. But their experience with low quality and low-priced applications systems claiming to be HIS or HMS to earn some quick business tends to confuse them. However, 21CI thinks that the hospitals deserve better products and innovative solutions and strives to bring further innovations to their products and services to match the changing requirements of their customers. They are selective in the Indian market and make sure that the company gets into the right place, where the people value their knowledge, best practices, domain and methodologies.

Since markets are in the early stage of growth, 21CI is also actively involved in developing new products and improving the scope of their current products to empower the entire value chain of Healthcare Business Software Application IT lifecycle. 21CI looks forward to become a global leader in providing best-in-class-innovative products and solutions to their customers, developed and implemented by a team of inspired Centurions.

Disclaimer: This article was published in CIO Review Magazine's June 2013 issue. The article can also be assed through the following link. All products and brand names mentioned are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. All Trademarks remain the property of their respective holders, and in no way indicates any relationship between 21st Century Informatics B.V or its associates and the holders of said trademarks. CIO Review is owned by CIO Review, Bangalore.

Embracing healthcare software applications

Vasukumar Nair
Vasukumar Nair, Director – Marketing & Sales, 21st Century Informatics
What were some of the key challenges that the Health IT sector faced in 2012?
21st Century Informatics has achieved a few good orders in 2012. For these customers, we are providing solutions ranging from end-to-end hospital information systems to a multi-centred chain of enterprise level solutions. We have leveraged our domain expertise acquired through the last 18 years and continue to provide a scalable, affordable and reliable Hospital Information System. However, the key challenges continue to be slow decision-making and low-budget allocation from the providers’ side. I think there is still lack of awareness on advantages of IT automation and they don’t consider IT as an enabler to improve organisational performance. Finally this will reflect in low IT budgets allocated and sometimes lack of support during the time implementation and that has to be certainly changed.

What changes you have noticed in healthcare in the year 2012 in areas like Health IT, Medical Equipment, Regulations etc? 
One of the few areas that we call ‘happening’ in India is healthcare. We found a lot of stakeholders such as service providers, regulatory bodies, software providers becoming very active and we believe they are the driving forces for that positive happening. In 2012 we participated in a few healthcare events and we found that the industry is talking about interoperability and standardisation. Advanced healthcare applications definitely require reliable and secured interoperable standards. Another factor is that standardisation of a healthcare process needs to be in place, which can also promote better regulation.

What are the prospects of growth for the health IT market in 2013? 
Whether it is green fields or expansion of hospitals, or chain of general clinics, speciality clinics – all components of the Indian healthcare, irrespective of their size, are rapidly embracing healthcare software applications and we are seeing a healthy demand for our solutions. Definitely, there are some new healthcare projects coming up and also many in the expansion mode. There will be a need of healthcare IT applications for these new ventures.

We are constantly innovating to provide new features and functionality to our users. We are working on a new technology platform that enables rapid expansion of functionality during IT products implementation.
Please tell us about some new and innovative solutions/technologies that you are planning to introduce in 2013? 
We are constantly innovating to provide new features and functionality to our users. We are working on a new technology platform that enables rapid expansion of functionality during IT products implementation. It is supported by advancement in cloud computing technology and emergence of the SaaS model. We are hoping that by mid of 2013, we would be able to launch this for our customers.

What are the top technologies in healthcare that will play crucial role in the year 2013 and beyond? 
There are many technology trends in the market. Whether it is Cloud, Analytics, Big data, the technology is here to stay, but I do not believe that the mid market healthcare organisations have yet taken full advantage of it. I am sure; they can capitalise these emerging technologies and attain competitive advantage.

Evolving software for transformation

The current set of healthcare products is designed to improve the healthcare process by providing customised interventions, reducing the cost incurred, and ensuring an integrated and shared patient-centred care

By Rajmohan Nair, Head – Marketing and Partner Sales, 21st Century Informatics

There is a tremendous leap in the market primarily due to the implementation of various healthcarecentric laws and acts by  institutions and regulatory bodies, advances in technology, and increased awareness among patients and their demand for quality care at low cost. Healthcare providers, hence, have a wide variety of packages to choose from for facilitating healthcare reforms, competing in the market, providing high quality service with low cost of operations, planning for expansion and maintaining efficient control of operations. During the last two decades, a variety of software products have been developed and implemented for healthcare providers. Initially, when electronic records were introduced into the market, their functionality and application value were restricted to the same location (i.e., hospital) they were operational in. Over the years, this restriction has diminished, and the application has evolved into a unified patient-centred EHR system facilitating a seamless inter- and intra-hospital data transfer.

Although the plethora of healthcare ICT products available in the market provides the basis for a collaborative shared patient care, the effectiveness of these products depends on the accuracy with which they fulfil the dynamically evolving needs of the healthcare  industry. These approaches generally encompass all the key processes such as diagnostic and therapeutic procedures, revenue cycle management, administrative function improvisation, policy management and business and clinical analytics.

Healthcare providers and other stakeholders in the industry must look forward to adopting highly evolvable healthcare applications software that will have the inherent DNA to adapt to ‘constant change’.
The challenge
One of the main challenges that affect the need to fulfil the ever-changing requirement scenario is that users are often not satisfied with the products offered and their applications. Survey reports indicate that the dissatisfaction is primarily due to the products’ limiteduser interface and customisation to overcome changing needs. The healthcare ICT industry is becoming aware that the traditional business software approach towards building healthcare software products, which involves a rapid expansion of functionality during implementation and post-implementation stages, is not suitable for the healthcare segment. It has been observed and approved by industry leaders that, especially in the healthcare applications scenario, the key feature of any product is its ‘change’ capability. When organisations are faced with the ‘constant change’ phenomenon due to changes in the business ecosystem, such as organisational, political, economical, statutory, technological and legal, the need for a constantly improvised change request in application software is equally demanding. If these modification requests are addressed by the principal software provider, the biggest disadvantages are huge cost and time, both of which go against the primary requirements of an ideal healthcare product – quick goto- market and low cost. The users of healthcare software packages are demanding a new evolutionary approach in the handling of the product life cycle of healthcare systems. An aging product will not fit the current requirements of the healthcare segment. An evolvable application is hence a prerequisite to satisfy the changing needs of the healthcare industry.

The way forward and call to action
Moving away from a traditional models of software applications, healthcare providers and other stakeholders in the industry must look forward to adopting highly evolvable healthcare applications software that will have the inherent DNA to adapt to ‘constant change’. This approach will make the product suitable for a multi-organisational management, facilitate collaborative workspace, provide flexibility to the users of the system to adapt the system to changing business needs without large customisation costs and empower the users through its learning tools.