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.

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

By CR Team
Monday, June 17, 2013

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, 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.

Spreading Knowledge: 21CI Team Member, a Visiting Faculty at a Prestigious Business School

Tushar Ratanghayra, Head Business Support at 21st Century Informatics completed a course on Healthcare IT for  PGP HCM Program at Welingkar College. The visiting faculty and Students (the batch size of 27 of working professionals consisting of Doctors & Para Medical Members of Clinical fraternity) at Welingkar College on a photo shoot of this exciting batch!

ICT Processes in Healthcare Organizations at Welingkar College

Tushar Ratanghayra, Head Business Support at 21st Century Informatics teaches a course on ICT Processes in Healthcare Organizations at Welingkar College. The visiting faculty and Students at Welingkar College on a photo shoot of this exciting class!

Aniruddha Nene at eIndia 2010

Aniruddha Nene, Principal Consultant and Director at 21st Century Health Management Solutions Private Limited speaking at eIndia-2010.

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Healthcare IT Projects – Issues and Opportunities

"Be it the hospitals, pathology laboratories, diagnostic imaging centres or for that matter even pharmacy outlets, today all are strategizing to be different from others and dream of being market leaders. And in order to be able to realize this explicit objective they have started looking at healthcare IT solutions as a critical differentiator."

Introduction
The vibrant and dynamic healthcare market of contemporary times continues to thrive in an environment of severe cut-throat competition and enormous uncertainties. On the one hand is the opportunity to cash in on the tremendous growth opportunities, while on the other hand there is intense pressure to survive against young, lean and innovative players. Acknowledging this reality, majority of the market players have undergone a dramatic transformation in their attitudes. Be it the hospitals, pathology laboratories, diagnostic imaging centres and for that matter even pharmacy outlets, today all are strategizing to be different from others and dream of being market leaders. And in order to be able to realize this explicit objective they have started looking at healthcare IT solutions as a critical differentiator. This paradigm shift has significantly paved a way for increased percolation and utilization of healthcare IT products and solutions in healthcare delivery. There is a clear and unanimous understanding among all the stakeholders about the benefits of information technology in improving the operational efficiency, quality of patient care and image branding. Thus, in the recent times healthcare IT is undergoing serious boost in its acceptance. However while acceptance signals a triumph; the flip side is that the very decision of deploying IT solutions by healthcare delivery providers exposes a raw wound and thus reveals issues and challenges associated.

If we categorically target the hospital sector, as a general observation, most of the hospitals venture in the adoption of IT solutions keeping in minds the above mentioned benefits. Once decided the process encompasses a whole gamut of activities which ranges from vendor selection to software implementation.

"Healthcare IT projects involve a galaxy of management techniques and skills. These projects offer a tremendous learning opportunity to all stakeholders involved.".”

Issues
Vendor selection is not the end
For most of the hospitals, a myth prevails that selection of a big IT company is synonymous to a robust system and a successful implementation. Hence, a significant amount of time and energy is devoted in selecting an IT vendor. In fact, majority of the hospitals managements believe that once the budget is allocated and vendor selection is done, their role and responsibility for the remainder of the project becomes passive and is limited only to providing data, infrastructure and some resource. However, in my opinion it is this mindset which is responsible for most of the failures in software implementations in healthcare. Indeed vendor selection constitutes a critical step but hospitals should look at the project beyond it and with a broader spectrum.

Select solution partners, not vendors
The second biggest issue is that hospitals in general select vendors as against solution partners. There could be a non exhaustive list of vendors in the healthcare IT market but what hospitals should look for is a solution partners and not a vendor. Generally it is found that vendors come with a technical perspective and thus a very confined knowledge of healthcare domain. This limits them from addressing many such issues
which are crucial from the hospital management's perspective On the contrary a solution provider with its rich and varied knowledge of the domain appears more promising and provides both the IT solution as well as the required expertise of the field.

Focus on project management approach
Another issue is the practice of neglecting the important role of project management. Project management approach holds the key to sustained success for any software implementation. Hospitals should prioritize this concept, both while constituting the inhouse plan and also while evaluating the solution partner's charter. Similarly, adequate attention should be paid while forming and evaluating the project team of both the sides. Emphasize on people management approach Yet another issue, which needs to be tackled is people management.

It is a universally accepted fact that success of a software project is highly people dependent. Therefore, in case of healthcare projects, like all other parameters, equal and strong emphasis should be laid on people management as well. It becomes highly imperative for project heads of both sides to keep the team morale significantly high throughout the project. Project delays and apathy at management levels could lead to people disillusionment, which in turn may lead to attrition and thus affect the project outcomes.

Opportunities
As discussed above, healthcare IT projects involve a galaxy of management techniques and skills. These projects also offer a tremendous learning opportunity to all stakeholders involved.


Opportunities to the healthcare providers
Healthcare providers of any group are the biggest beneficiaries of the IT solutions. They not only get the direct advantages of automation, which the systems offer, but gain much more from other opportunities during the process of IT solutions deployment. Some of such interlaced opportunities include:

• Business Process Engineering (BPR): Majority of implementations today involves some kind of re-engineering in the existing processes and work flows. By undergoing such changes and improvements, healthcare systems adopt the standard best practices and thus improve their operational efficiency.
• Accreditations: With quality the dictum in today's times, implementation of IT solutions provide an opportunity to healthcare providers in getting their information systems and operations aligned with the standard requirements set for accreditation.
• Similarly there exist many such hidden opportunities, which can be explored and exploited in the best interest of the organisations.

Opportunities to solution partners
Healthcare IT projects often become a demanding proposition on the solution partners. The difficulties and challenges that accompany any new project can be taken as opportunities of continuous improvement. Invariably projects of any size can be taken as a canvas to improve and grow on: • New improved processes

• Innovative use of technology
• Expectation management skills
• Change management skills
• Time and resource management skills
• Risk management skills

Conclusion
At 21st century health management solutions, we address the problems of 21st century healthcare with a unique blend of innovation and expertise of domain and technology. With solutions catering to a vast market segment and implementations done using professional and knowledge based project management skills, we catalyse the healthcare delivery systems. With a strong core team of subject matter experts, it is a very exciting place to work with highly passionate fellow experts as healthcare IT solution partners to some of the leading healthcare providers in India and abroad.

Future of Healthcare

The future of the sector is bright, as professional healthcare institutes are mushrooming across the country

With over 23 years of rich experience, he has been instrumental in providing IT solutions to various industries and verticals. He has in-depth knowledge about the industry and the emerging trends that would take the healthcare IT segment forward.

Role of IT in healthcare and Indian scenario...
IT plays a significant role today, as it is a business enabler. More so, the effective use of IT and communications technology has enabled the access of healthcare to hitherto remote areas. There is more predictability and reliability with the use of IT systems & processes in an otherwise person dependent scenario.

In India, the use of IT in healthcare is fragmented. Some institutes use disparate systems, while others have enterprise-wide systems in place at the top end. On the applications side, the focus of a large majority of institutes is on the administrative functions like billing, materials, etc. However, now there is a small but growing demand and deployment of applications for clinical purposes.

Emerging trends...
Some of the emerging trends include the increasing use of innovative devices like RFID, smart cards, e-pens, handheld devices like PDAs, tablet PCs, modern-day diagnostic laboratory equipment. These devices offer digital interfacing and facilitate shorter turnaround times.
The use of telemedicine including Teleradiology and Telepathology also assist patients in getting better clinical care without having to travel.

Cost-effectiveness in healthcare IT...
Healthcare IT investments pay for itself, either directly in a financial manner or by promoting preventive healthcare. This indirectly increases the productivity of human resources. Generally, healthcare institutes tend to overstock materials at various stock locations, thus
increasing carrying costs. However, with proper systems, the optimum stock levels can be maintained without the attendant risks of stock-outs. In case of enterprise wide chains, economies of scale can be achieved by common procurement across various entities within the chain. As far as hardware systems are concerned, clients could be deployed across the hospital connected through terminal servers, thus bringing about savings in both one-time as repetitive maintenance costs and also providing reliability.

Combating challenges...
Healthcare IT implementation in India is comparatively at a nascent stage. Most hospitals are not networked and the IT systems in place are usually not interoperable. Due to
this, the hospital cannot provide holistic solutions. It is advisable to get all laboratory information management systems, imaging systems, electronic medical records, telemedicine and patient portals from a single provider, thus ensuring interoperability & avoiding duplication of
efforts.

Future possibilities...
The future of the sector is bright, as professional healthcare institutes are mushrooming across the country. Also, the world has now become a global village. Now a scan done in the US can be reported in India within the same day, which otherwise would have taken a couple of
days. Such things are possible because of IT & communication technologies. Also, proper
implementations of healthcare IT systems facilitate institutes get accreditation from both national as well as international agencies.

Future possibilities...
The future of the sector is bright, as professional healthcare institutes are mushrooming across the country. Also, the world has now become a global village. Now a scan done in the US can be reported in India within the same day, which otherwise would have taken a couple of
days. Such things are possible because of IT & communication technologies. Also, proper
implementations of healthcare IT systems facilitate institutes get accreditation from both national as well as international agencies.

About the Author
Dinesh Shenoy, Senior Advisory Consultant, 21st Century Health Management Solutions
With over 23 years of rich experience, he has been instrumental in providing IT solutions to various industries and verticals. He has in-depth knowledge about the industry and the emerging trends that would take the healthcare IT segment forward